Tag: political correctness

My coworkers asked about my Christian beliefs. Then I lost my job

I am a sophomore at Boyce College, a Christian university in Louisville, Kentucky. In November 2024, I took a job as a barista at Heine Brothers Coffee to support myself financially and help cover the financial strains that college can bring. It was a great job that fit well with my busy class schedule and assignments. Whether I was putting smiles on customers’ faces or having fun with coworkers, my shifts went by quickly, and I enjoyed the work. I would have never guessed how it would end.

My Christian faith is a core part of who I am. My faith in Christ defines who I am and how I view the world. I am a sinner saved by grace and God has changed my heart. Ever since Christ saved me, I now seek to love others as Christ first loved us. That is my joy in life.

During a shift last October, two coworkers discovered I attend a Christian college and immediately sparked a conversation about my religious beliefs on marriage, sexuality and other sensitive topics. I’ve always been open to answering questions about my faith, so when given this opportunity to share my Christian views, I responded truthfully, respectfully, and only when invited to share.

I believe that everyone is on their own faith journey and I respect people’s right to reach their own conclusions and have their own beliefs. I am always willing to listen to what others believe and share my faith while respecting others’ decisions. I’m always intrigued to learn more about others and get to know people on a deeper level.

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Hobbs’ New Arizona Board Of Regents Picks Devoted To DEI

The Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) grew by two new members last week. 

On Monday, Gov. Katie Hobbs appointed Michele Halyard, an oncologist specializing in breast cancer, and Steve Peru, formerly Coconino County’s manager.

“Dr. Michele Halyard is a leader in medical education who will provide expertise to the Board as the universities work to meet the state’s healthcare needs,” said Hobbs in an announcement. “Steve Peru is a longtime public servant with decades of experience who will bring his pragmatic leadership and focus on accountability to the Board. Our public university students deserve the best, and I’m confident Michele and Steve will help ensure the continued excellence of higher education in Arizona.”

Halyard’s past and present accomplishments included in Hobbs’ announcement referenced a fellowship with the American Society for Radiation Oncology, professorship of radiation oncology, vice deanship of the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine, board membership with the Arizona Community Foundation, and membership with the Arizona Bioscience Roadmap Steering Committee. 

One thing not mentioned in Hobbs’ announcement was Halyard’s career-long DEI goals on reforming health care with health equity. 

Halyard has spent her 40 years in medicine advocating for affirmative action and health equity in medicine, according to Mayo Clinic profiles on the doctor published in 2023 and 2024.

Halyard expressed her belief in the existence of structural racism in medicine, and its disparate impacts on patient suffering and mortality. 

“I didn’t see a lot of people of color at the clinic either working or as patients, and I really thought what a shame that was because of the preeminence of healthcare that we deliver,” said Halyard. “People who, perhaps, feel shut out from the healthcare system, people who experience structural racism that prevents them from getting in for the best care, that really results in excess death, excess suffering among populations of people.” 

It was under Halyard that Mayo Clinic initiated “antiracism efforts” by using affirmative action in recruiting.

Halyard’s husband is Phoenix City Councilman Kevin Robinson, a Democrat and former Phoenix Police Department assistant chief. 

Peru’s historic dedication to DEI initiatives wasn’t mentioned in Hobbs’ press release, either. 

Shortly after joining Coconino County as their manager, Peru took on a years-long effort by the county to recruit an individual for a DEI directorship position.

In the weeks following Trump’s inauguration last year, Peru posted a comment agreeing with another colleague’s LinkedIn post advocating for DEI in K-12 in the wake of the new administration’s policies. 

Prior to joining Coconino County, Peru was the chief development and government relations officer at Coconino County Community College and former CEO and president of United Way of Northern Arizona. 

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King’s College accused of ‘dumbing down’ after overlooking poor grammar to be more ‘inclusive’

A top university wants to scale back traditional exams and overlook grammar mistakes in a bid to be more ‘inclusive’.

King’s College London, part of the elite Russell Group, is overhauling assessment to ‘validate diverse knowledge systems and lived experiences’.

In addition, it has introduced new shorter word limits on essays, to prevent students being ‘overburdened’.

Lecturers have branded the overhaul ‘dumbing down’, while students have criticised the word caps in an open letter.

In a recent presentation of the changes, staff were told to give students a ‘choice in assessment formats’, such as coursework.

The new framework discourages ‘over-reliance’ on exams, with ‘more options’ added to how students can be assessed.

One of the slides shown to staff with the heading ‘equality, diversity and inclusion’ stated they should ‘focus on ideas, not grammar’.

It also said assessment should be ‘culturally responsive’ and ‘reward the use of culture, language and identity’.

Marking should be ‘inclusive’ and ’embrace linguistic diversity’, the slide said.

In a separate announcement, students were also told some of their essays will be capped at 1,300 words – down from 2,000 currently, to reduce academic stress.

However, this backfired when students slammed it in an open letter, saying it would stop them properly exploring their subjects.

One King’s College academic, who asked to be anonymous, said: ‘This whole framework, dreamt up by middle management to justify their existence, is about sending a message about which side of the culture war the university is on.

‘They seem to be claiming students are snowflakes and can’t cope, but students have set up a petition against it.

‘These young people are looking at the tough labour market and they haven’t got time for all this.

‘This is management trying to be ‘down-with-the-kids’ and classically getting it wrong’.

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The Tyranny Of Compelled Speech

While censorship is often the main focus of discussions about free speech, there’s a related phenomenon that can do just as much damage to a free society. Not by preventing people from saying things they believe in, but by forcing them to say things they do not.

Compelled speech requires people to use certain words or phrases, or to partake in upholding certain ideological beliefs. It is just as dangerous to free expression as overt censorship.

The constant recitation of indigenous “land acknowledgements” illustrates Canada’s shift towards enforced mass-compliance on complicated social issues. These statements have become ubiquitous in Canadian public life: at schools, workplaces, government functions, ceremonies, and sporting events. Institutions display them on websites, documents, email signatures, and social media. A busy person in Canada may come across dozens of land acknowledgements per day in various contexts.

Although framed as optional gestures of respect, many organizations now have policies mandating land acknowledgements; in other circumstances, social pressure can make them seem obligatory even if they’re not.

Land acknowledgements have morphed well beyond a simple sharing of history into something much more problematic: they have become a sort of sacred ritual with near-spiritual implications, tying certain ethnic groups to ownership over nature itself. When unpacked, there is a lot being said between the lines.

Stepping out of line on land acknowledgements can set off a variety of hostile reactions, ranging from social condemnation to significant legal consequences. Geoffrey Horsman is a biochemistry professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont. As a parent of three children in the local school system and a member of his local school’s parent council, he noted the growing politicization of the regional school system. Of particular concern was the practice of opening every meeting with a land acknowledgement, which took up valuable time and reinforced what he considers a divisive premise.

“I don’t think there is anything good that can come out of the idea that a certain ethnic group are the true inheritors of this land,” Horsman said in an interview. But when he raised his objections about the practice, he encountered immediate resistance. In a series of meetings with Waterloo Region District School Board staff, he was told that even discussing the issue was off the table. He has since brought a legal case against the board.

Catherine Kronas, the mother of a student attending Ancaster High Secondary School in Hamilton, Ont., actually lost her position as an elected member of her school council last year after she politely disagreed with land statements being read out loud before meetings. “School councils should decide what gets said in their meetings, and we shouldn’t have to recite something mandated by the government,” she told me. Kronas was reinstated only after threatening legal action.

Horsman’s and Kronas’s cases are both about indigenous land acknowledgements, but the issues they raise run deeper. They could have been challenging any form of imposed ideological speech. In fact, many Canadian governments and institutions are developing a worrying track record of legally enforcing ideological language on a number of topics

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Air Canada CEO Out After Crash — For Not Offering Condolences in Second Language

In the wake of a major airline crash, it’s not unusual for the carrier’s CEO to resign, especially if there were signs that corporate culture may have played a hand in it.

In the case of Air Canada Express Flight 8646, that’s not the case. In fact, it’s pretty much clear at this point that the Air Canada jet had no role in the accident and that some concatenation of events led to a fire truck given clearance to cross a runway as the jet was landing.

Rather, Michael Rousseau is out of a job because he didn’t offer an apology in French as well as English.

The March 22 crash killed both the captain and first officer on board the Bombardier CRJ900, although all 72 passengers and two other crew members survived the flight from Montreal to New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

And while Rousseau put out a four-minute video apology, saying he had the “deepest sorrow for everyone affected,” the Financial Times reported that wasn’t what got people upset.

Instead, it was the fact that the only French words he used were “bonjour” and “merci.”

“Air Canada, the country’s largest airline, is based in majority French-speaking Quebec,” the Financial Times noted.

“Canada is officially a bilingual nation and his message sparked condemnation from senior political leaders, while also stirring longstanding tensions that led Quebec to attempt to become an independent state via referendums in 1980 and 1995.”

And Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney weighed in, because of course he did, and in the worst way possible.

“Companies like Air Canada particularly have a responsibility to always communicate in both official languages regardless of the situation,” he said, according to The Associated Press.

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Key Trump agency unleashes probe on blue state over potential race-based mortgage aid: ‘DEI is dead’

The Trump administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced Tuesday that it launched an investigation into a Washington state housing program the agency accused of potentially providing subsidized mortgage assistance to people based on race. 

The Washington State Housing Finance Commission was alerted this week that HUD’s Office for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity would be investigating its Covenant Homeownership Program. The program was established by the state legislature in 2023, which commissioned a report to investigate alleged housing discrimination in the state and how to remedy it. In particular, the program wanted to address racially restrictive housing covenants embedded in the state’s history, which became unenforceable following a Supreme Court ruling in 1948 and were voided altogether in 1969.

The housing program was launched a year later for first-time homebuyers considered “people of color and other historically marginalized communities.” It offered zero-interest loans of up to $150,000 for down payments and closing costs, and the loans did not need to be repaid until the homeowners sold or refinanced the properties, according to Seattle King County REALTORS. 

“Generations of systemic, racist, and discriminatory policies have formed barriers to homeownership for Black, Indigenous, and people of color and other historically marginalized communities in Washington state,” Washington Democrat Jamila Taylor said of the bill to establish the program that she helped introduce. “Historically, redlining, racially restrictive covenants, mortgage subsidies and incentives, and displacement have been explicitly outlined practices. To date, racially restricted covenants have been identified in more than 40,000 property deeds across the state.”

But according to HUD, applicants in the program do not need to be from low-income areas, as the income ceiling for the program is 120% of the median income for the area. The agency said in order to qualify, applicants have to have a parent or grandparent of Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, or Indian descent. Meanwhile, HUD highlighted that persons of European, Japanese, Arab, or Jewish ancestry did not appear to qualify for the program.

HUD also points out, citing directions from the Washington housing commission on how to apply for the Covenant Homeownership Program, that the only application process for the program is to call a hotline where prospective applicants speak to “a Commission-trained lender” who then determines whether people meet the program’s eligibility requirements.

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Youth centre did not report 16-year-old girl’s rape to authorities because ‘Muslim boys are already under enough police scrutiny’, German media claims

A report in the German media has claimed that a youth centre did not report a girl’s alleged rape to authorities due to concerns that ‘Muslim boys are already under enough police scrutiny.’

The claims emerged regarding the handling of serious allegations at the Wutzkyallee youth centre in Neukölln, Berlin.

German outlet Bild reported that a sworn affidavit from employees at the neighboring facility, MaDonna, confirmed suspicions that authorities failed to report alleged rapists due to concerns over scrutiny of Muslim boys. The claims have been denied.

The affidavit is said to detail the case of a 16-year-old Turkish-Kurdish schoolgirl who was allegedly raped by an Arab boy and subsequently sexually assaulted by eight others in a secluded area of the youth centre.

The document has been submitted to both the Senate and district politicians.

It indicates that the alleged perpetrators filmed the assaults and used the footage to blackmail the victim.

Additionally, the group reportedly attempted to persuade the victim’s younger sister to meet with them.

In the affidavit, it was stated: ‘In this context, we informed the social services coordinator that a report must be filed. The social services coordinator refrained from doing so, as she feared it would marginalize the perpetrators.

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Florida AG Warns NFL Against Race-Based Diversity Hiring

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier made it clear that he plans to challenge one of the most controversial practices in sports: an NFL rule that requires minority candidates to be interviewed for key coaching and front office decisions.

In a letter and an accompanying video released Wednesday, Uthmeier said he plans to challenge the so-called “Rooney Rule” used by the league, arguing it violates state law.

According to WPEC-TV in West Palm Beach, Uthmeier’s letter warned that the rule cannot be enforced on the three NFL teams based in Florida — the Jacksonville Jaguars, Miami Dolphins, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers — saying all three must “interview, hire, and train based on merit,” as should the NFL.

If the teams are subject to the rule “or any variation or extension thereof,” he warned, it “may result in a civil rights enforcement action.”

He also said that the NFL’s Coach & Front Office Accelerator Program and Mackie Development Program would “limit, segregate, and classify” candidates in a manner inconsistent with Florida law.

“My office is sending a letter to the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, regarding the league’s hiring practices — specifically, the use of the so-called ‘Rooney Rule,’ which requires NFL teams to interview candidates based on race,” he said in the social media video.

“The NFL’s use of the Rooney Rule violates Florida law by requiring race-based considerations in hiring. Florida law is clear: Hiring decisions cannot be based on race, and the Rooney Rule mandates race-based interviews and incentivizes race-based decisions.”

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Biden Judge Blocks Trump From Forcing Pentagon, Every Federal Agency to Cut Ties with Anthropic, a ‘Woke’ AI Company That is ‘Putting Troops in Danger’

A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump Administration from forcing the Pentagon and every federal agency to cut ties with Anthropic.

Judge Rita Lin, a Biden appointee said Trump’s ban is a First Amendment violation.

The judge halted her ruling for a week to give the Justice Department time to appeal her decision.

Last month, President Trump ordered every federal agency to cease use of Anthropic AI after the company refused to comply with the Pentagon’s demands.

“THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS! That decision belongs to YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, and the tremendous leaders I appoint to run our Military,” Trump said.

“The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution. Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY,” Trump said.

“Therefore, I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again! There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic’s products, at various levels. Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow,” Trump added.

“WE will decide the fate of our Country — NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump added.

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WOKE AND STUPID: Maryland Democrats Push Bill That Would Require Tampons in Every Public Men’s Restroom

Democrats in Maryland have figured out a new way to waste everyone’s time and money. They want to require the placement of free tampons in all public men’s rooms.

This is another virtue signal from Democrats who just can’t stop falling all over themselves to appeal to the trans community. Who else would need a tampon in a men’s room?

This is just more proof that the Democrats learned absolutely nothing from the 2024 election. The voting public made their position on this kind of thing very clear. The Democrats just don’t care.

FOX News reports:

Maryland Dems mocked for prioritizing tampons in men’s bathrooms amid state deficit: ‘Nonsense’

Maryland Del. Kathy Szeliga, R-Baltimore County, is calling out Maryland Democrats for backing a bill that would stock tampons in men’s bathrooms in state-owned buildings — an idea she says is emblematic of Annapolis’ misplaced priorities.

Szeliga said that after she was made aware of HB 941, she took to the House floor to question which public buildings would be impacted. In particular, she wanted to know if the state’s professional sports facilities, such as where the Ravens and Orioles play, would be impacted. During her remarks, the GOP Maryland lawmaker also questioned language in the bill ordering “appropriately sized tampons” be placed in all public restrooms in all public buildings.

“What are appropriately sized tampons?” Szeliga asked, earning laughter from parts of the House. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. What do you consider appropriate?”

In response, Del. Ken Kerr, D-Fredrick County, said that the language “just means that tampons are offered, there’s no specific size.” Szeliga shot back, arguing that if that is the case, it should say so, and not talk about sizing.

Meanwhile, Szeliga then pivoted to inquire with Democrats about which public buildings would be impacted, with emphasis on the football stadium where the NFL franchise Baltimore Ravens play and the baseball stadium, Camden Yards, where the Baltimore Orioles play. According to Szeliga, both are owned by the Maryland Stadium Authority.

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