Tag: political correctness

California Has Gay-Certification Program To Tap Into $633 Million For “LGBT” Businesses

Americans are used to handouts for favored groups. Affirmative action in university admissions, corporate “diversity” initiatives, and minority-owned contracting requirements direct opportunities, resources, and contracts to supposedly “oppressed” groups, such as women, Native Americans, blacks, and Hispanics.

In California, state Democrats have embraced another kind of favoritism: contracts for state-certified gay-owned businesses.

The scheme operates through the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which regulates privately owned utility companies. California utilities spent more than $43 billion in 2024 on contractors—fuel suppliers, surveyors, engineers, and others—whose work helps deliver water, gas, electricity, and internet service to California’s 39 million residents.

In 1986, Governor George Deukmejian signed Assembly Bill 3678, which required certain CPUC-regulated utilities to submit annual “plans” for buying goods and services from woman- and minority-owned companies. Two years later, CPUC created its “Supplier Diversity Program,” which would enforce the law and set contracting “goals” for large utilities.

Under a series of Democratic governors, the program has expanded to include gay-owned businesses. In September 2014, then-Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation requiring CPUC to recognize “LGBT-owned businesses” as eligible for supplier-diversity benefits. Five years later, Governor Gavin Newsom expanded the program further, “encouraging” other companies involved in the energy sector to award contracts to gay-owned firms.

In the years that followed, CPUC faced activist pressure as it implemented the gay expansion. BuildOUT California, a since-rebranded LGBT building-industry organization, sent a letter to the commission arguing that “homophobia” existed within “the ranks of the utility companies.” The state’s legislative LGBTQ caucus suggested in a 2021 letter that even considering lower gay-procurement targets was “an insult to the LGBTQ+ community.”

By 2022, CPUC had fully implemented the expansion. In practice, this meant establishing a “goal” for utility companies with annual revenues exceeding $25 million to buy things from state-certified LGBT businesses: 0.5 percent of procurement in 2022; 1 percent in 2023; and 1.5 percent in 2024 and beyond. If “large” CPUC-regulated utilities met these “goals” in 2024, they would have sent roughly $633 million to LGBT-owned firms.

This scheme raises an obvious question: How does a business qualify as officially gay? Paperwork. Supplier Clearinghouse, a group that certifies firms for the CPUC program, features a list of qualifications linked on its website. Applicants can secure certification by providing a letter from an “LGBT organization” attesting to their sexual preferences; proof that a newspaper identified them as “LGBT”; or three letters from “personal contacts” written “on company letterhead” attesting to their homosexual orientation. Corporate officials who “falsely represent” their business as gay face up to a year in county jail.

Supplier Clearinghouse also accepts gay-certification letters from the National LGBTQ+ & Allied Chamber of Commerce. The chamber has its own list of accepted documents, including human resources complaints or police records claiming LGBT discrimination. As NGLCC states on its website, “Certification is a journey, not a destination.”

Mary Ann Horton has experienced this “journey” firsthand. Horton, an early internet pioneer credited with helping develop the e-mail attachment, is a white male who “transitioned” and is now married to a woman. Horton’s company, Red Ace, is registered in California as a woman- and LGBT-owned business.

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‘Grotesque abuse’: Judge orders homeschooling parents to JAIL for failing to teach daughters government ‘gender’ lessons

In a stunning illustration of what happens when politically correct and biased judges, driven by leftist social agendas, are put behind the bench, one jurist has ordered two homeschooling parents to jail for 50 days for failing to teach their daughters the judge’s version of “gender” education.

The parents now have convictions for “intellectual neglect,” issued by the unidentified Brazilian judge, according to a report from ADF International.

The legal team reported the judge issued his wild opinion that was opposite of even recommendations from prosecutors, who listened to witnesses and results of the social and academic development of the girls, both accomplished pianists who speak multiple languages, and then said the parents should be acquitted.

The judge was accepting no evidence, however, and said the parents were “using their daughters as pawns in an ideological struggle, subjecting them to a form of unregulated education, the effectiveness and quality of which lack adequate metrics within the Brazilian legal system, while completely excluding the State’s involvement.”

The report identified the parents as Audato and Ieda Denardi, and their sentences are suspended while they appeal to a higher court.

The judge also ranted against the parents because he thought the girls, ages 11 and 15, didn’t like Brazilian folk music, leading him to assume that they weren’t educated properly in “diversity.”

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Radical Woke Mount Sinai Hospital Exposed: DEI, Child Sex Changes & Epstein Ties Prioritized Over Patients

Consumer protection organization Consumers’ Research began a campaign Monday highlighting New York City-based nonprofit Mount Sinai Hospital‘s prioritization of what Consumers’ calls the hospital’s woke and political ideology as well as having what it says are questionable partnerships such as ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Executive director of Consumers’ Research Will Hild told The Center Square that “Mount Sinai is another example of a nonprofit hospital that has seemingly abandoned its core mission of patient care in favor of a radical political agenda.”

“The hospital has a history of prioritizing radical causes like DEI, child sex-change procedures, and climate activism, and has maintained a deeply troubling and disturbing relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, accepting donations and giving him special access to doctors and hospital resources,” Hild said.

“This behavior by nonprofit health systems like Mount Sinai should be investigated for supporting these political agendas at taxpayers’ expense,” Hild said.

Hild told The Center Square that “Consumers’ Research is exposing nonprofit hospitals for using taxpayer dollars and federal revenue streams and benefits to put politics over patients.”

“Taxpayers and elected officials need to be aware that health systems are misusing their resources and these practices need to be examined by lawmakers,” Hild said.

Mount Sinai media relations has not yet responded to The Center Square’s request for comment.

Included in Consumers’ Research’s campaign are a mobile billboard circling the Mount Sinai campus, a website, and “targeted digital around Capitol Hill.”

The mobile billboard displays statements such as Mount Sinai “performed over 130 sex change procedures on kids,” “provides transgender resources for 8-year-olds,” and has ties to Epstein.

Consumers’ Research’s website campaign goes further in depth, showcasing the hospital’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, transgender ideology promotion, climate activism and “questionable partnerships.”

According to the campaign, Mount Sinai operates an Office for Health Data, Outcomes, and Engagement Strategy “to promote health equity cultural awareness.”

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Horrible! Two-Thirds of Colleges Require DEI Courses to Graduate

A shocking new report from Campus Reform found that 67% of colleges and universities across America require Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion courses for students to graduate.

The report, originally conducted by Speech First, “took a look at general education requirements at 248 colleges and found that 165 of them require students to take a DEI course to graduate.”

A tiny 33 percent of so-called institutes of higher learning didn’t offer DEI courses, according to the surveys.

This violates federal executive orders that sought to expunge DEI and Wokeness from schools.

Sadly, “additionally, the report found that ”students are subjected to courses advocating far-left ideological perspectives and pushing far-left political advocacy.”

“59% of the universities surveyed that have DEI course requirements are public, while 41% are private.”

This is pure leftist indoctrination, and sadly, it has not gone away despite the public having rejected Woke and DEI ideology at the polls by electing President Trump.

“Speech First Executive Director Cherise Trump told FOX Business that her organization began digging after conversations with students in college.

”We had heard about some of the trainings through freshman orientations and some of the online modules,” said Trump. “But we had not heard that you have to take full semester-long courses in order to graduate, so we wanted to look more into this, and that’s when we started digging.”

In a shocking example, Loyola Marymount University, a private Jesuit institution, offered a course titled “Bad Catholics.”

This woke garbage is in opposition to the will of the American public and is offensive to many patriots.

The content of this course is just as bad as one would expect from the title ”The goal of this course is to explore contemporary voices of loyal dissent in the catholic church,” the course description states. “The course will begin by exploring questions of teaching and authority, belief and dissent, and belonging and ”cancel culture” from theological and philosophical perspectives. We will then explore voices of dissent from Feminist theologians, Black and Latinx liberation theologians, Queer theologians, and Eco-theologians. These four areas of dissent demonstrate the plurality of discourse among contemporary Catholic theologians and the struggle over orthodox belief and right practice that takes place under asymmetrical power relations.”

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4 California School Districts Under DoJ Review Over Gender Ideology, Sex Ed Policies

Four California public school districts face federal inquiries into whether their policies and practices regarding instruction on sexual orientation and gender ideology violate students’ civil rights.

The districts under Justice Department review are all in Northern California, with three in Monterey County—Graves Elementary School District, Santa Rita Union School District, and Soledad Unified School District—as well as San Francisco Unified School District. Their students range from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.

The reviews will determine whether the districts notify parents of their right to opt their children out of instruction on sexual orientation and gender ideology, also known as SOGI, and whether district practices align with federal protections against sex discrimination.

“This Department of Justice will not tolerate local school authorities trampling on the rights of parents concerning the education of their children,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the department’s Civil Rights Division said in a June 8 statement.

“The Supreme Court’s recent decisions in ‘Mahmoud’ and ‘Mirabelli’ have put all school districts on notice: policies that keep parents in the dark about sexuality and gender ideology in the classroom must end now.”

California law mandates sex education to encompass these topics, and state provisions give parents the right to opt their children out of the instruction on these subjects, either entirely or in part.

The San Francisco Unified School District has previously told its teachers that neither parental permission nor notification is needed to teach or discuss SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) topics in the classroom.

In addition, SOGI topics “appear to be embedded in California’s social studies and history classes,” according to the DOJ statement.

The reviews will also cover policies permitting access to single-sex intimate spaces such as bathrooms and locker rooms, in addition to girls’ sports teams, based on a student’s perceived gender identity rather than sex. The Justice Department will decide whether these policies are in compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The four districts all receive federal taxpayer funding, subjecting them to Title IX’s prohibitions on sex discrimination in education programs and activities.

The department will evaluate whether the districts have enacted changes in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Mirabelli v. Bonta.

“Plaintiffs alleged that California’s policies permitted disclosure of a student’s gender transitioning at school only if the student consented,” the ruling states.

“Plaintiffs claimed that these policies violated their rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

“We conclude that the parents who seek religious exemptions are likely to succeed on the merits of their Free Exercise Clause claim.”

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All It Took Was a Single Non-Woke Word for This Man’s Life’s Work to Come to the Brink of Ruin

A Danish man spent years building a clothing company. Over the years, he fashioned, through hard work, careful study, trial and error, attention to trends, and sheer perseverance, a popular clothing brand. In the last few days, however, he has come to the brink of ruin, and of seeing all his labors come to naught.

No, his place of business wasn’t robbed or burnt down. He wasn’t defrauded. He didn’t lose all his money at the gaming tables, or succumb to drug use. What threatens to destroy his life’s work is that he told a truth that many people might admit behind closed doors, but that hardly anyone would ever say publicly. Tobia Sloth said it. All it took was a single word. And now he is paying the price. But that doesn’t make what he said any less true.

The Danish-language news outlet Nyheder reported Sunday that “a single comment from the director has caused problems for a Danish clothing brand. The popular clothing brand Norse Projects – and not least its founder, Tobia Sloth – has ended up in a regular s**tstorm.”

It all started with a silly icebreaker-type survey at LinkedIn: “A Linkedin user asked on the platform what you would remove from Earth that would make it better if you could only choose one thing.” The expected answers came flooding in, but not from Tobia Sloth: “While just under a thousand users have answered everything from ‘nanoplastic particles from the biosphere’ to ‘rainforest destruction’ and ‘mercury-based gold mining,’ Tobia Sloth’s one-word response was without further explanation.”

That one word? Hide the kids, cover the dog’s eyes, and then I’ll tell you.

To the question of what he would remove from the Earth in order to make it a better place, Tobia Sloth answered: “Islam.”

Nyheder notes, with admirable understatement, that Sloth’s “answer has struck many a chord – both in Denmark and in the USA, where Norse Projects has a large customer base.” In other words, the usual suspects are beside themselves with spittle-flecked rage, and “they criticize the company for being built on a racist foundation.”

Racist? What? Islam is not a race, and there are Muslims (and jihadis) of all races. But “racism” is the primary, if not the only, sin that a human being can commit, as far as the left is concerned, and so pretty much anything the left dislikes these days counts as “racism.”

You don’t like getting blown up or having some guy screaming “Allahu akbar” stab you at random on the street? Then you’re a racist. You don’t like the idea of making women cover their hair and in some cases even their faces, even in the most stifling heat, on pain of being beaten if they don’t? Yep: racist. You’re not a fan of institutionalizing discrimination against and harassment of people who hold a different religious faith from your own? You’re practically Bull Connor.

And so now Tobia Sloth is looking at the very real prospect of professional ruin: “The criticism has already caused Tobia Sloth to apologise, but it is not certain that the apology is enough to save the company’s reputation, assesses a branding expert.” When the woke mob gets enraged at you, it stays enraged until it extracts its pound of flesh. “Although Tobia Sloth’s comment was quickly deleted from Linkedin, it has gotten people both in Denmark and internationally to the keys with massive criticism of Norse Projects and its founder.”

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UK Cop Fired For Questioning Islam In ‘Safe Space’

A Christian police community support officer lost his career after asking a Muslim colleague about jihad and Hamas atrocities during a diversity session that promised open discussion. At the same time, training drilled “white privilege” into police ranks.

Luke Salmons, a 46-year-old Christian father of two and respected PCSO with North Yorkshire Police, relates how he attended a mandatory training day on race, religion and culture. Trainers spent several minutes marching up and down the room chanting “Islam is a religion of peace” repeatedly. A Muslim sergeant then spoke about his faith and invited questions in what was presented as a “safe space” where “there was no such thing as a bad question.”

Salmons asked what the sergeant, as a peaceful Muslim, thought about the situation in Gaza and atrocities carried out by Hamas and other groups in the name of Islam. He also asked what jihad meant to him. The discussion was civil. The sergeant later invited Salmons for coffee to continue the conversation privately.

Salmons brought a book on the topic to work. Colleagues photographed it in his locker and reported him as a risk. An inspector then suspended him, declaring “I don’t like your beliefs.” Salmons noted the obvious double standard: no inspector would ever say that to a Muslim officer.

He was suspended on full pay for months, resigned under pressure in April 2025, and faced gross misconduct proceedings. Supported by the Christian Legal Centre, he appealed. Chief Constable Tim Forber overturned the dismissal before Salmons had even finished presenting his case. There was no apology and the episode devastated his family.

“I loved my job and I was good at it. I was well respected as a PCSO and my colleagues said they loved working with me and couldn’t understand what was happening. But an overzealous inspector took against me and that was the end of my career, even though I had done nothing wrong,” he related.

“It devastated me and my family. For months we lived in total uncertainty, with my reputation being shredded in secret. I resigned not because I had done anything wrong, but because the silence, the delay and the pressure became unbearable for my wife and daughters,” Salmons added.

This is the new reality inside parts of British policing: open discussion of uncomfortable facts about Islamist ideology is treated as career-ending wrongthink, while entire days are devoted to chanting slogans and centring one faith above others.

The same ideological pressures are visible in operational failures. In the Henry Nowak case, an 18-year-old white British student was stabbed five times. He told responding officers he had been stabbed and could not breathe. Instead of treating him as a medical emergency, officers handcuffed him after his attacker falsely claimed racism. The attacker was allowed to walk away. An inquest is examining whether the handcuffing contributed to Nowak’s death.

The police watchdog investigated itself and declared no wrongdoing.

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Insanity! Boston University Advertises DEI and Black Power Courses

In yet another example of wasted money going to colleges Campus Reform is reporting “Boston University, a private Massachusetts-based research institution, appears to intertwine progressive ideology in its history department.”

In addition, instead of preparing students for the workforce “It seems to not just celebrate diversity in terms of job opportunities, however, as it includes a “Statement on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” on its webpage.”

This was banned throughout American schools as part of an executive order after President Trump was reelected President in some part because people wanted wokeness and DEI purged from academia.

The statement of DEI they have on the website reads like a BLM statement “The Boston University History Department recognizes and mourns the long history of racial injustice that has left deep scars on our society and which continues to manifest in horrific incidents of racial violence, including the very recent murders of Black men and women at the hands of police,”

The anti American bias of these courses is blatent.

The contrast in how they describe racial extremism couldn’t be stronger.

“The first, entitled “White Supremacist Thought: Self, Culture and Society since the 18th Century,” examines the “the simultaneous, mutualistically symbiotic emergence and sustained codependent development of autonomous individuality and white supremacy in western Europe and the United States from the 18th century to the present day.”

Black Supremacy is described very differently Black Power in the Classroom: The History of Black Studies,” which aims to center “Black experiences, cultures, knowledge production and identity formation in the United States and in the African Diaspora across time and space.”

In other words according to these racist leftists Black Power is good but White Power bad.  Of course Americans favor neither yet its worth pointing out the disparity in how these ideologies are framed.

“The word “supremacy” is not used in reference to any other race in the other courses’ descriptions.”

An earlier course offered a few years ago represented this ethno supremicist sentiment.

A “Topics in History” class offered in the summer of 2020 explored the theme of “Race, Gender, and Representation.”

“Through abolitionism, women’s suffrage, workers’ rights, AIDS activism, the Movement for Black Lives, and anti-prison organizing, we explore the relationship between visual culture and representation in U.S. history, and examine marginalized and minoritized peoples’ mobilization of visual and print media to clapback and correct pervasive stereotypes and misrepresentations in popular culture,” the course description states.

One associate professor was the co-editor of Radical Teacher’s special issue on “Teaching #BlackLives Matter” and a contributing author to “Colonize This! Young women of color on today’s feminism.”

Gender and racial ideology should be relegated to the ashbin of history.

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Iowa Democrat Candidate Apologized for Being ‘White, Cis-Gender’ Woman in 2020 Campaign

A Democrat congressional candidate in Iowa apologized on a previous campaign website for being white and said she “benefited greatly from privilege.”

In 2020, now congressional nominee Lindsay James had a section on her campaign site called “A Confession” in which she addressed her skin color and so-called “privilege,” the Daily Caller reported Wednesday. “I am a white, cis-gender, able bodied, middle class, college educated woman,” the archived site for her Iowa state legislature campaign read.

James’s “confession” continued:

There is no doubt that I have worked hard to get where I am in my life, but I have also benefited greatly from privilege. My personal journey of self-examination as it relates to my own privilege has not been perfect, but I am committed to doing the hard work of honest self-reflection, considering critical feedback when given, and working every day to better myself and use my privilege to advocate for others.

–Rep. Lindsay James (she/her)

James’ website also claimed there was discrimination against LGBTQ people in health care, education, housing, and employment.

The Iowa Capital Dispatch reported Tuesday that “James will face Republican former state Rep. Joe Mitchell in the general election for Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District,” noting that the district “includes Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, Dubuque and Mason City. It has been represented by a Republican since 2021, and is currently held by U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is not seeking another term to run for the U.S. Senate.”

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University Of Oregon Grapples With Budget Crisis After Years Of Woke Excess

It appears that being unrelentingly woke means that you need fewer dormitories. The University of Oregon is facing a major budget crisis and will cut $65 million from its budget and close dorms due to low enrollment. That growing crisis, however, did not stop Oregon from burning almost a million dollars fighting against free speech. It also did not induce its faculty to offer greater intellectual diversity and tolerance to prospective students. Oregon is a cautionary tale for a generation of academic social warriors, but also an opportunity for those who want to restore balance in higher education.

Oregon has long been an example of academic orthodoxy. While most state schools begrudgingly yield to First Amendment demands and offer better free speech alternatives to private universities, Oregon is known as a hardened silo for the far left in teaching.

We previously discussed how Portland State University Professor Bruce Gilley, who was blocked from the Twitter account of the University of Oregon’s Division of Equity and Inclusion after tweeting “All men are created equal.” Oregon spent almost a million dollars fighting to bar such speech.

Such controversies have plagued the university for years, with no sign of self-examination by administrators or academics. The university was criticized for its monitoring of social media to punish errant thoughts or microaggressions. The law school’s law review was accused of anti-Israel discrimination.

The school previously gave special recognition to University of California (Santa Barbara) Professor Mireille Miller-Young, who criminally assaulted pro-life advocates on the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara.  At the University of Oregon, she was honored as a featured speaker at the University of Oregon’s  Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.  Part of its “black feminist speaker series,” Miller-Young’s work was highlighted by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of English to show “the radical potential of black feminism in the work that we do on campus and in our everyday lives.”

Now, the school is facing declining revenues and enrollments.

President Karl Scholz recently announced that this was due to lower out-of-state first-year enrollment, which means lower tuition revenue, increased costs, and a loss of grant funding.

Strangely, while closing dorms, the school is still building two new dorms.

Putting aside the school’s past budget judgment and discipline, the university’s reputation for intellectual orthodoxy deters many who do not want to pay tuition for their children to be indoctrinated or silenced.  Even with plunging trust in higher education, administrators and faculty cannot resist the temptation to exclude opposing voices.

Oregon is not the only school facing such shortfalls. Some woke institutions have closed entirely. The irony is that faculty would seem to prefer to see their institutions die than restore balance to their departments. However, this may offer a real opportunity for legislators and donors to force real changes in the culture of these schools.

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