In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Back in the day -- and that was actually pretty recently -- we were told that same-sex attraction and pedophilia were two different things. As of 2010, for instance, there was finger-wagging at the Vatican Secretary of State : The sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church took yet another turn this week when statements by the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, second only to Pope Benedict, linked pedophilia to homosexuality. Bertone said: "Many psychologists, many psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relationship between celibacy and pedophilia, but many others have demonstrated that there is a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia." . . . Other church and lay leaders similarly have called the remarks outrageous and ill-informed. While en route to the United States in 2008, Pope Benedict said he considered homosexuality and pedophilia to be separate matters. So why would Cardinal Bertone make his statements? And what...

There's been a small but steady trickle of news since my last post on this subject, punctuated by this morning's notice of Sam Bankman-Fried's arrest in the Bahamas at the request of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Charges are to be unsealed later today. "Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the U.S. Government, based on a sealed indictment filed by the SDNY," Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Souther District of New York said in a statement. "We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time." There is actually little new here. It appears Sam was under some sort of house detention in the Bahamas pending this development, and the only surprise is how quickly the actual US arrest was made -- as I've pointed out, the single recent equivalent has been the Madoff indictment, which took place so quickly because Madoff himse...

Forget Sam Brinton, the big news Saturday night was Yoel Roth, Twitter's former Trust & Safety head, who is shown at left above with his husband after their San Francisco wedding in August 2019. Roth was initially kept on at Twitter by its new owner Elon Musk despite presenting himself as the public face of its controversial censorship and banning policies, but as of November 10, he had resigned . I have yet to endorse Musk as some sort of cultural caudillo , but I can grant that as of late Saturday, he'd at least done homework he should have been doing over a month ago: Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis: pic.twitter.com/1NiBohjhMQ — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2022 A Bloomberg story that covered this tweet commented with the standard line: Far-right and extremist voices have long pushed a false claim that LGBTQ+ people are sexual predators who are “grooming” children to abuse them....

I did a quick web search on Sam Brinton in preparing yesterday's post, especially in the context of his felony charges for stealing designer luggage and the doubts the gay community has aired about him since that scandal broke. Wikipedia provides a somewhat more complete account of his career , but as far as I can tell, it still omits critical issues. Using his preferred they/them pronouns, it says Brinton graduated from Kansas State University with a Bachelor of Science in nuclear engineering and vocal music. While attending the university, they organized its first Pride march in 2010. They have a dual Master of Science degree in nuclear science and engineering (technology and policy program) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. . . ., In 2016, Brinton was a senior policy analyst for the Bipartisan Policy Center, lobbying for updated regulations so nuclear waste can be used to power advanced nuclear reactors. In February 2020, the website of Deep Isolation, a Berkel...

The poster above is is from just one recent controversy involving school curricula that effectively groom children for all the variants of pansexualism. In this particular case, New Jersey mother Angela Reading revealed she was told she was being 'monitored' by local law enforcement, after airing concerns about posters hanging at the entrance of her seven-year-old's school in North Hanover Township. Reportedly part of an assignment to create a 'safe space' for students, the colorful art installations contain language that tout different sorts of sexuality, including the virtues of being both 'poly-' and 'pansexual' - all scrawled in children's handwriting. The added wrinkle is the woman "revealed cops became privy to her since-deleted Facebook post after being tipped [off] by a lieutenant colonel at nearby military base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, who took issue with the post." The military official - a senior staffer at the New Jerse...

The photo above has caused a stir this morning on several right-wing platforms. "Bonchie" at Red State has the conventonal take: Notice anything? If you are politically astute and have paid attention to leftwing rhetoric over the last decade or so, what’s wrong with the picture will jump out immediately: Everyone is white. Well, to be fair, there does appear to be one woman of Asian ancestry, but regardless, I’ve been assured that this ratio of whiteness is proof of systemic racism. They're represented as the female Capitol press corps, surrounding outgoing Speaker Pelosi. Almost all of them have the exact same hairstyle, the 1960s Joan Baez that Ted Bundy is said to have favored, in which Ms Baez herself is seen at left, altthough what's puzzling is that Ms Baez has moved on, as shown below right. Indeed, they all have somewhat dull facial expressions with phony smiles, and they're all dressed in something like the minimalist upper-class style one might ...

I wasn't surprised when Time chose Zelensky as its "person" of the year -- in fact, several days ago, I assumed the choice had already been published, and I just hadn't seen it, Says a lot about Time these days. What struck me most was the kitschiness of the portrait, the Kennedyesque visionary stare into the distance that in fact would have worked 60 years ago, but of course, we're in 2022. The other thing that hit me a moment later was remembering last year's choice for woman of the year, Admiral Levine. President Zelensky is a person ; Admiral Levine is a woman , which of course she is not. In fact, Elon Musk just withdrew the Babylon Bee's suspension from Twitter for maintaining just this. I was briefly tempted to call Time 's successive choices inconsistent, but on a moment's reflection, I realized it wasn't inconsistent, it was just two-spirited. Recall that the Old Left saw the Soviet Union as the authoritative manifestation of ...