TOXIC WHITE MASCULINITY
Committee study on abuse in sport will look to expand beyond just hockey, MPs say


OTTAWA — The House of Commons committee investigating abuse in sport will reconvene next week to hash out how to expand its probe beyond Hockey Canada.



MPs on the committee say their inquiries must find a way to hold all sports organizations, coaches and athletes accountable for inappropriate and abusive behaviour.

Liberal MP Chris Bittle, one of 12 regular members on the Canadian Heritage committee, said the departure of Hockey Canada's president and board of directors Tuesday was necessary, but that alone "is not a substitute for culture change."

The committee launched its investigation into Hockey Canada in June, after it came to light that the organization settled a lawsuit with a woman who alleged eight members of the 2018 national junior team sexually assaulted her after a Hockey Canada gala in London, Ont.

Bittle said there needs to be a focus now on how to fix what ails not only Hockey Canada, but the deep cultural issues across many sports that have prompted a look-the-other-way attitude when medals and glory are on the line.

"We can look at whether there are organizations that are putting athletes on such pedestals that there are no consequences for their actions, including this case that has led to our inquiry where there didn't seem to be any consequences," Bittle said in an interview.

Hockey Canada officials told the committee in June they learned about the alleged assault the day after the London gala, but an internal investigation was not able to identify the players involved and no disciplinary action was taken.

"Why wasn't there a look to say, 'There's certain people who shouldn't be wearing the Maple Leaf on their chest representing Canada moving forward'?" Bittle asked. "If there's no consequences for coaches and athletes in terms of their conduct, it's going to be worse."

NDP MP Peter Julian said the leadership overhaul at Hockey Canada does not change the "fundamental issues around how Hockey Canada treats these horrific allegations of sexual violence, treats sexual abuse, treats victims."

Getting to the bottom of that should be a priority for the committee, but Julian said those questions need to be asked of many more sporting organizations.

"It's not just Hockey Canada that is not taking seriously the issues of protecting athletes and protecting the public," he said. "So there is a lot of work for our committee still to do."

The committee normally meets on Tuesdays and Fridays when the House of Commons is sitting and Julian said he expects the first meeting next week will be spent discussing where the inquiry now needs to go and which witnesses are still to be called.

"I think it's fair to say all members of the committee understand that this is beyond hockey, that this is a crisis in national sports organizations," said Julian. "And I expect that we will continue the hearings and broaden that mandate on that basis."

Allegations of psychological, physical and sexual abuse have arisen in multiple sports in Canada in recent years including rowing, boxing, rugby, skiing and soccer.

Hundreds of athletes in gymnastics and bobsled signed open letters in March calling for independent investigations of abuse and toxic environments. Both letters suggest athletes were afraid to speak up earlier for fear of being punished and left off national and Olympic teams.

In 2018, a lawsuit was filed against Alpine Canada by former skiers who said the organization covered up sexual abuse at the hands of a coach in part to prevent a loss of sponsorships.

Julian said the issue is not just that sporting organizations have been allowing toxic environments, but also that the federal government hasn't done anything to stop it.

"The federal government has let national sports organizations run themselves with no oversight, with no obligations, and that has to fundamentally change," said Julian.

That is starting to change. Sport Minister Pascale St.-Onge suspended federal funding for both Hockey Canada and Gymnastics Canada earlier this year when the abuse allegations arose.

She is overhauling the contribution agreements so that sports bodies have to show accountability, transparency and a commitment to safe sport in order to receive federal money.

To get funding next year, all sporting organizations are required to sign on with the new sporting integrity commissioner, who was hired in June to implement a "Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport."

As of now, only two national federations have signed on: Volleyball Canada and Weightlifting Canada.

In its first three months of operation, the integrity commissioner's office received 24 formal complaints, but two-thirds were related to people in sporting organizations that haven't yet signed on to the process.

Only six of the complaints were considered admissible under the commissioner's jurisdiction.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 12, 2022.

Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press

Hockey culture suffers from a 'systemic problem' of sexual violence, minister says

Ashley Burke - Sept 29

Sport Minister Pascale St-Onge says there's a "systemic problem" of sexual violence and toxic masculinity in Canada's hockey culture that Hockey Canada has failed to change.

Her comment was a response to a Fifth Estate investigation that identified at least 15 group sexual assault cases involving junior hockey players investigated by police since 1989 — half of which surfaced in the past decade.

At least 50 players have been accused in the alleged crimes. Half were charged and only one was convicted after taking a plea to a lesser offence, the Fifth Estate found.

"We're talking about a systemic issue," St.-Onge told CBC News on Thursday. "The stories that we're reading about are deeply disturbing and sickening, quite frankly."

"We've heard these stories before. It's not the first time we talked about the toxic culture in hockey. But nothing has been done, or not enough has been done in the past 10 years. It's a terrible legacy we want to see change."

St-Onge sharpened her condemnation of Hockey Canada on Thursday, arguing the organization doesn't have the luxury of years to change its culture. She said this toxic culture in the sport has been "normalized for too long."

"A lot of players have become men who have never taken responsibility for their actions and what happened," she said. "But it's also about the people in management and in leadership roles that have also failed all those years.

"So far, I don't think what's been done is enough, for sure."

Hockey Canada continues to face calls for a change to its leadership; one of those calls came from St-Onge. The hockey organization has been under intense public scrutiny since May, after a woman filed a $3.5-million lawsuit alleging eight hockey players — some of them members of the 2018 World Junior hockey team — sexually assaulted her.

Hockey parents were outraged to learn that Hockey Canada used a fund made up in part of their registration fees to pay for a settlement in that case and others.

St-Onge suspended Hockey Canada's funding in June — the strongest sanction at her disposal, she said. A series of major sponsors followed suit and pulled their financial support for the hockey organization.

There are a number of conditions Hockey Canada must meet before federal funding can resume. But St-Onge didn't close the door on further conditions after the completion of a financial audit and a series of ongoing investigations.

'There needs to be change in leadership in Hockey Canada,' says sports minister

"I'm giving myself all the flexibility to decide when the federal funding will be reintroduced," she said.

Hockey Canada is facing a "real sustainability problem," said St-Onge, as parents wonder if they should sign up their children for hockey and provincial federations threaten to withhold their dues.

"It can't take two, three, four, five years to change the culture," she said. "There needs to be a 180-degree shift in hockey culture and it needs to happen now."

Hockey Canada says it's taking action

In a statement, Hockey Canada said that "while culture change cannot happen overnight," it is "taking immediate action to eliminate inappropriate action in and around our game."

The hockey organization said it has made progress on its plan to address "toxic" culture by launching a third-party complaint mechanism, rolling out mandatory training for national teams and working on updating its policies.

"We are committed to making the changes necessary to improve the culture of Canada's game, including by taking a leadership role in prioritizing safe sport in Canada," said Hockey Canada in a statement to CBC News on Thursday.

The hockey organization is encouraging anyone who feels they were a victim of maltreatment, sexual violence or any other kind of abuse to come forward and report it.

Hockey Canada said it's also "important to note" it commissioned a former Supreme Court justice to conduct a third-party governance review.



Hockey Canada president and chief operating officer Scott Smith told a Commons committee on July 27 that his organization's goal is to

© Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

House of Commons committee resumes next month

The only member of Hockey Canada's leadership who publicly resigned during the controversy, Michael Brind'Armour, is scheduled to testify at a House of Commons committee on Oct. 4.

Brind'Amour is the former chair of Hockey Canada's board of directors. He stepped down in early August, saying "there is no need to wait for a new era."

The Commons committee has expanded its review into how Hockey Canada handles cases of sexual assault allegations to include other sports.

Andrea Skinner, the Hockey Canada board's new interim chair, is also being called to testify next month. She was first elected to the board in November 2020, used to serve as a member of the risk management committee and was chair of the human resources committee.

The committee has asked Hockey Canada's board of directors to submit any notes it took during in-camera sessions when it discussed the 2018 group sexual assault case and settlement.

You can watch the Fifth Estate's documentary Anatomy of a Scandal Thursday at 9 p.m. (9:30 p.m. in Newfoundland) on CBC-TV or stream it on CBC Gem.

Delusional broadcast disorder has claimed its latest victim: John Cleese

Opinion by Marina Hyde -The Guardian

How very interesting to hear John Cleese explain how he’d be immediately cancelled or censored on the BBC, in comments made freely and at considerable length yesterday in the marquee 8.10am interview slot on the BBC’s flagship Radio 4 news programme. Explaining why he was about to become a presenter on GB News, the 82-year-old declared loftily: “The BBC have not come to me and said: ‘Would you like to have some one-hour shows?’ And if they did, I would say: ‘Not on your nelly!’ Because I wouldn’t get five minutes into the first show before I’d been cancelled or censored.” To which the only possible response is, “Morning, Major!”


Photograph: Amel Emrić/AP

These days, Cleese claims to “live in hotel rooms” – a bit on-the-nose, but there you go – and evidently boasts a lively range of views. In the strictest interests of accuracy, we should note that he was recently given a whole two series of a sitcom on the BBC, with the last episode of Hold the Sunset broadcast in 2019, a few months before the pandemic hit. Furthermore, it was barely a month ago that Cleese was tweeting: “GB News is sometimes referred to, rather wittily, as ‘KGB News’. To what extent is GB News influenced by Russian interests?” I don’t know – but perhaps it’s a matter that could be explored on his new GB News show. We’re told anything goes.

For now, what seems clear is that Cleese suffers one of the great afflictions of our age, a kind of delusional broadcast disorder that can make the sufferer believe they have been cancelled by the BBC even while they are literally on the BBC. The worst part of it is that we are not allowed to discuss this social sickness because of political correctness. I tried to tell my husband about it at breakfast yesterday – he works at the BBC – but he told me to be quiet so he could listen to John Cleese on the BBC. Like Cleese, I had been silenced.

In any rational world you’d be able to state the obvious reality – the condition is overwhelmingly suffered by men. But you can’t say it! You can’t say it! You can look at Cleese, or Noel Edmonds, or Nigel Farage, or Laurence Fox, but you’re banned from saying what you see. You have to pretend that women are out there every five minutes wanging on about how they’re not allowed to have a primetime show forever, as well as a bus pass or leadership of a political party, and how their only alternative option is presenting hours of gloriously bitter live telly every week on one of our bazillion-pound news-o-tainment channels.

Related video: John Cleese has revealed he will be joining GB News

Duration 1:29   View on Watch

In a sane world, you’d be allowed to say scientific facts, like the fact that 90% of heroically whingeing BBC cancellees are men, 95% of them are acrimoniously divorced, and 110% of them have “divorced energy”. (Obviously, it’s Not All Previously Primetime Men – Mr Blobby has behaved with perfect dignity.) Yet you can’t say it. You’d get cancelled in seconds. In fact, I don’t even know how I’m writing this next sentence.

Pity me. In my incredibly vulnerable position as a newspaper columnist, I have to think about this stuff constantly. Constantly! I once described a soon-to-launch TV news channel as sure to become “unmoored from facts” – and its CEO voided his pram of all toys. He spent rather a lot of time to-ing and fro-ing with the readers’ editor demanding some mean words be changed, before handing Press Gazette a copy of his very grand letter to the Guardian (which was also subsequently published by the Guardian). In it, he explained: “We are absolutely committed to our mission to report news in the most accurate and balanced way we can. It is unfortunate that your article failed to adhere to this basic principle.” The channel in question? Why, it was GB News.

Related: Allegations swirl around Paul Dacre’s Daily Mail. Until they clear, a peerage would be a travesty | Jane Martinson

Don’t get me wrong, I was and am still hugely amused by Angelos Frangopoulos, the adorable little Aussie snowflake who wrote that letter. But imagine how I felt last week when I saw his channel had given a guest spot to Naomi Wolf, who hasn’t been playing with a full deck of data points since the 00s. Wolf’s appearance was essentially a very, very long diatribe against the Covid vaccine. Her assertion that “mass murder has taken place” was bolstered by the GB News presenter Mark Steyn explaining that vaccines “cause every conceivable kind of damage”. Other lowlights of Naomi’s appearance, which was allowed to proceed without a single piece of disinformation being questioned? The claim that Covid vaccinations were “bioweapons” that were “sterilising people” and “poisoning breast milk”. Also, “civil society has been wholly co-opted by bad actors trying to destroy British civil society”. Wolf went on – entirely unchallenged – to compare today’s medical establishment to the eugenicists and exterminators of the Third Reich. Steyn just nodded along, repeatedly going “yeah”, presumably in “the most accurate and balanced way” he could. He booked her again the very next night.

Anyway, a fun new stablemate for John Cleese. Cleese famously decided that the Brexit debate saw this country sink “to the lowest intellectual level ever”, so I strongly urge him to push that envelope and book Wolf on his first show. In the meantime, those of us saddened by a former idol’s comic decline should comfort ourselves that some of the best recent comedy has happened on GB News. Last year on the free speech channel, presenter Guto Harri took the knee live on air, got suspended for it, quit and was soon made prime minister Boris Johnson’s comms chief. The whole batshit saga was easily funnier than anything Cleese has done since A Fish Called Wanda (1988), and we must look forward to his promising new show in that spirit.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
What Just Happened?! by Marina Hyde (Guardian Faber, £18.99) is out now

Scientists integrate human nerve cells into rat brains

By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News

A new procedure transplanting human nerve cells into rat brains transforms rat brains into a biological living laboratory that could revolutionize research into human mental disorders and brain development, researchers say. Photo by Anna Tyurina/Shutterstock

Human brain tissue has been successfully transplanted into the brains of rats using a cutting-edge experimental procedure, say researchers. They envision the achievement as a promising new frontier in medical research.

Groups of living human nerve cells have become integrated into the brains of laboratory rats, creating hybrid brain circuits that can be activated through input from the rats' senses, the scientists reported Wednesday.

Further, experiments have shown that the human tissue forms a two-way connection within the rat brain, also sending out signals that can potentially alter the rat's behavior, the researchers said.

This procedure transforms rat brains into a biological living laboratory that could revolutionize research into human mental disorders and brain development, said study co-author Dr. Sergiu Pasca. He is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine, in California.

For example, the human brain grafts could aid early testing of drugs designed to treat mental conditions like schizophrenia, Pasca suggested.

"You can transplant patient cells into the rat, wait until they integrate into the circuitry and then take your experimental drug or your drug of interest and inject it into the rat," Pasca said. "Then you can see if the drug is reaching the target. Is it changing the defect you're testing?"

Such experiments cannot be performed on humans, but might provide invaluable information applicable to them.

RELATED Study: Injured brain's ability to heal may hinge on time of day, circadian rhythms

The new research revolves around tiny cell cultures called organoids that are created in a lab dish from stem cells.

Organoids can be used to recreate tissue from any human organ. For instance, Pasca's research team has generated tissue belonging to more than a dozen different human brain regions as organoids in the lab.

However, the research value of these cell cultures has been limited because they can't grow to full size in a dish, Pasca said.

RELATED Noninvasive electrical brain stimulation boosts memory, study shows

Brain tissue in a dish also isn't attached to and functioning within a living creature, which is essential in studying mental conditions, he added.

"Psychiatric disorders are behaviorally defined," Pasca said. "So when you find a defect in a cell at the bottom of a dish - let's say faulty dendrites or fewer synapses - will that result in changes in the circuitry? Will that affect behavior? How would those cause disease in a patient? That's the motivation for us to try to integrate these cultures into living systems."

As part of this effort, the researchers transplanted organoids closely resembling the human cerebral cortex into the brains of nearly 100 rat pups just two to three days old.

The young rat brains accepted the human tissue, forming blood vessels to support the organoids and supplying immune cells to protect them against disease, the researchers found.

With this support, the implanted human organoids thrived, eventually covering about one-third of one hemisphere of the rats' brains.

"They grow about six times larger than what an equivalent neuron would grow in a dish," Pasca said. "If you have a batch of organoids and half of them are transplanted and half stay in a dish, if you compare them after 250 days you'll find the human neurons that have been transplanted are at least six times larger."

The human neurons also set up shop in the rat brains, forming working connections with the rodents' own circuits.

For example, when researchers annoyed the rats' whiskers with puffs of air, the human neurons in the rat brains lit up in time with the stimulus.

In fact, the human brain matter integrated well enough to actually affect the behavior of the lab rats, the study authors said.

To demonstrate this, the scientists implanted human organoids that were modified to respond to specific frequencies of blue laser light.

During a 15-day training period, researchers delivered random bursts of blue light delivered by ultrathin fiber-optic cables directly to the implanted organoids. After each burst, the rats were provided water from a tiny spout.

"We wanted to see whether we could teach the rats to associate delivery of reward - in this case, water delivery - with stimulation of human neurons," Pasca said.

By the end of the experiment, a random blue light pulse would send the rats scurrying to the spout, Pasca said.

These human/rat brain hybrids already have yielded some new understanding of Timothy syndrome, a rare genetic condition strongly associated with autism and epilepsy, the team noted.

The scientists transplanted an organoid generated from the cells of a Timothy syndrome patient on one side of a lab rat's brain, and on the other side they transplanted an organoid created from a healthy person.

Watching for five to six months, the researchers found that the Timothy syndrome organoid wound up with much smaller neurons and significantly different electrical activity than the healthy organoid.

These changes and differences did not develop in cells kept in a dish, Pasca said - they required being part of a living being in order to mature to that point.

Researchers might find similar developmental differences in organoids generated from the cells of people with schizophrenia or autism, Pasca added.

The findings were published Wednesday in Nature. A commentary accompanying the paper agreed that these transplants open up a new means of researching the human brain.

"Human neurons are different from those of all other species, and discrepancies in the rate at which rat and human neurons develop will limit how well human-to-rodent xenografts can mirror human brain function," said the article by two Swiss researchers.

"Nevertheless, the ability to produce mature human neural tissues that integrate with their host at the circuit level provides exciting opportunities for studying the development and basic biology of human neural circuitry, as well as representing a new system for testing therapies for human neurological diseases," the commentary concluded.

More information

The Harvard Stem Cell Institute has more about organoids.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Hamilton record store owner finds rare tape of 'lost' 1973 Neil Young concert at McMaster University

Cara Nickerson - Yesterday - CBC

Chad Silva, owner of Flashbacks Records on Concession Street in Hamilton, received a large donation of cassette tapes last year.

Silva, 24, said most record shop owners wouldn't have given the pile of homemade mixtapes and recordings a second glance.

"I went through everything because I'm thorough," he said. "Everything else was almost trash worthy."

That is, except for two unlabelled tapes containing notes in looping handwriting on the back of the set list for a lost 1973 McMaster University Neil Young show.


The Hamiltonian who recorded the cassette tapes wanted her husband to be able to listen to the concert, because he couldn't attend.© Cara Nickerson/CBC

"As a fan, I was like, 'Oh my God, Neil Young at McMaster University. I never even thought he would play there,'" Silva said.

The Sugar Mountain Neil Young fan website has curated a list of all the known shows by the Toronto-born artist and their recordings. Silva found the date of the McMaster show: Oct. 28, 1973.

"Beside that date, it said not recorded, presumed to be lost. And I was like, 'Well, I have it in my hands right here,'" Silva said.

A 'unique and unusual' concert

The tape Silva found was part of Young's Tonight's the Night tour.

Paul Panchezak, a McMaster student at the time and longtime volunteer at CFMU, McMaster's student radio station, said even though it was almost 50 years ago, he remembers it well.

"It was just before Halloween. It was raining and cold," he said.

"[Young] wore the white suit like the cover of Tonight's the Night and had a palm tree with a light bulb on top of it. And every once in a while, he flicked the light bulb on and said, 'Welcome to Miami Beach. Everything is cheaper than it looks.'"

After the concert, an article in McMaster's student paper, The Silhouette, that was written by Carol Ann Wilson brought up the stage dressing in a scathing review of the show.

"If an artificial palm tree and a light bulb 'sun' can convince you you're in Palm Beach, then you also probably feel that the long awaited Neil Young concert was worth the $5.00 ticket," the article says.

Panchezak said the crowd of students also didn't know how to take the concert.

"They didn't recognize any songs and, you know, it was interesting, but … it wasn't familiar."

To this day, Panchezak said, the 1973 concert is in the top three shows he's ever attended.

"I've been to a fair amount of concerts in my life but it's up there because it was so unique and unusual, and had so many unexpected twists and turns, and they played great."

'Neil's pretty consumed with his archives'

Silva said the woman who recorded and donated the bootleg copy of the concert never intended for it to be distributed.

"The story is her husband couldn't make the show, so she just brought her tape recorder for him to hear it later."

Silva said the woman who donated the tapes was worried Young would file a lawsuit against her, after reading that Eric Clapton allegedly sued a German widow who had put a bootleg CD of his on eBay in 2021. Clapton did not pursue the lawsuit.

"I don't think a lawsuit is even in the realm of possibilities," said Astrid Young, Neil Young's sister. "I think it's more of a matter of interest at this point, like a, 'Let's see what it sounds like' kind of thing."

In fact, in 2020, Young released six bootleg recordings of his concerts as vinyl records.

Astrid said that in recent years, Young has turned his focus to archiving his life's work, and he's currently working on his music from the 1990s and 2000s.

"Currently, Neil's pretty consumed with his archives," she said, adding her brother, who's 76, has recordings of most of his concerts from his long, prolific career.

"There is so much material, and they started working on this probably in the late '80s, sifting through shows, and a lot of it's on tape too," Astrid said.


Young performs at the 4th Annual Light Up The Blues at the Pantages Theatre on May 21, 2016 in Hollywood, Calif.© Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

"If you can imagine having to listen to 300 different versions of Down by the River, each one of them being 20 minutes long or something like that. It's definitely a full-time job for quite a few people..

"There's a lot of bootlegs floating around. Some of them are really good and some of them are really bad." Neil's interest comes down to how clean the audio is, she said.

CBC Hamilton listened to the tape at Flashbacks Record Store and found the audio was clear.

Silva said he has been in contact with Young's management and is donating the tape to the Young archives.

He said he's happy he ended up with the tape, so it doesn't go into the trash.

"I truly think in my heart of hearts, if any other store received this donation, it'd be in the landfill right now," Silva said.

UTTERLY CONFUSING

Parents up in arms over transgender policy for US military draft

Gustaf Kilander - Monday-  The Independent

GettyImages-1430797962.jpeg© Getty Images

US policy states that transgender women who were registered as males when they were born must register for the military draft with the Selective Service, while transgender men who were recorded as female when they were born don’t have to sign up for the draft.

Duration 1:01   Most Gen Zers Are Ineligible For US Military Service
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The unchanged policy garnered attention on Friday when the Selective Service tweeted “parents, if your son is an only son and the last male in your family to carry the family name, he is still required to register with SSS”.

The Selective Service System (SSS) site states that almost “all male US citizens and male immigrants, who are 18 through 25, are required to register with Selective Service”.

The site says that all biological males must sign up for the draft, which also applies to “US citizens or immigrants who are born male and have changed their gender to female”.

“Individuals who are born female and have changed their gender to male” don’t have to sign up, the site states.

“My son’s a girl now so we good,” one Twitter user said in response to the post from the Selective Service.

“For the purpose of SSS my son will identify as a girl starting with his 18th birthday. Checkmate fascist,” another account holder said.

The Biden administration announced its support for including all citizens in the draft last year.

At the time, House and Senate Armed Services Committee agreed that the National Defense Authorization Act wouldn’t include a requirement for women to sign up for the draft, according to Politico.

In a 21 September 2021 statement, the Biden administration said that it “supports section 513 and the registration requirement for all citizens, which further ensures a military selective system that is fair and just”.

“The government believes in two genders again when it’s time to send your kids to die so Lockheed doesn’t miss quarterly revenue numbers,” one Twitter user said.

“Parents, we may kill your son and end your bloodline and family name for the sake of defending some irrelevant pile of sand in some godforsaken corner of the globe that holds no worth whatsoever to you or your family,” conservative author Matt Walsh wrote.

“Do you assume we are all biologists? How are we to know what is a ‘son?’ It is 2022. Read a book and cool it with your transphobic tweets,” @ramzpaul added.

The Satanic Temple takes aim at Idaho, Indiana abortion bans

The Salem, Massachusetts-based group contends that the abortion bans infringe on the rights of members who may want to practice the temple's 'abortion ritual.'

One of the flags for sale on The Satanic Temple website, labeled "Stars Stripes and TST." Image via The Satanic Temple

October 6, 2022

By 

Rebecca Boone

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Religious organizations have long been involved in the debate over Idaho’s strict abortion laws, with Catholic priests, evangelical Christian groups and others frequently lobbying lawmakers and filing legal briefs in support of abortion bans.

Now The Satanic Temple is also weighing in. The Salem, Massachusetts-based group, which doesn’t believe in a literal Satan but describes itself as a ” non-theistic religious organization,” sued Idaho in federal court late last week contending that the state’s abortion bans infringe on the rights of members who may want to practice the temple’s “abortion ritual.”

“Our members hold a sincere religious belief that they can and should have an abortion,” in cases of unwanted pregnancies, W. James Mac Naughton, the attorney representing The Satanic Temple, said in a phone interview Wednesday. The organization filed similar lawsuits in Indiana last month and in Texas last year, and Mac Naughton said he wouldn’t rule out filing additional lawsuits in other states.

Forcing people to abide by one religious belief — that life begins at conception — and denying them the right to practice a different one — that everyone has the right to control their own body — violates religious freedom, he said.

“Abortion is a tricky enough issue as it is, but it just gets all inextricably intertwined with religious beliefs,” Mac Naughton said.

The Satanic Temple, dubbed TST in the lawsuit, is separate from the Church of Satan, which was founded in the 1960s. Founded in 2013, the Satanic Temple advocates for secularism and considers Satan a literary figure who serves as a metaphor for defending personal sovereignty against religious authority.

The Satanic Temple’s religious tenets include beliefs that people should have control over their own bodies, that the freedoms of others should be respected, and that scientific facts shouldn’t be distorted to fit personal beliefs.

The organization also has something it calls a “Satanic abortion ritual,” that includes the process of a person reminding themselves that their body is inviolate, undergoing the abortion and then reciting a personal affirmation.

In the lawsuit, the organization says some of its members in Idaho are “involuntarily pregnant women.” Each woman has a property right to her own uterus, the organization said, and that right — including the ability to remove a “protected unborn child” from the uterus — can’t be legally taken by the state without compensation.

The temple also contends that Idaho subjects involuntarily pregnant women to involuntary servitude by forcing them to provide an embryo or fetus with oxygen, nutrients, antibodies, body heat and other services, during gestation. Finally, the organization claims the state wrongly discriminates against many pregnant people by only allowing abortion for those who were subjected to rape or incest, and not allowing it for people who became pregnant accidentally.

The Idaho Attorney General’s spokesman Scott Graf declined to comment on the lawsuit because the office has a policy against commenting on pending litigation.

At least 21 states including Idaho, Indiana and Florida have enacted laws barring undo government interference in religious freedom, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The laws are not identical, but they frequently state that governments cannot interfere with an individual’s ability to exercise religious freedom without a compelling government interest. When there is a compelling reason, the interference with the person’s religious freedom must be carried out in the least restrictive way.

Spiritual beliefs surrounding abortion and other reproductive health issues are often nuanced, however, even within individual religious groups. The ACLU also sued in Indiana last month, saying the abortion ban violates Jewish theological teachings as well as theology allowing abortions in some circumstances by Islamic, Episcopal, Unitarian Universalist and Pagan faiths.

In June, a synagogue sued over Florida’s law banning many abortions after 15 weeks’ gestation, saying the law prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion.

William Shatner: Saving the Earth 'is my calling'

By Fred Topel

William Shatner entertains audiences with his stories. 

File Photo by Gary I Rothstein/UPI | License Photo

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- William Shatner told the audience at Los Angeles film festival, Beyond Fest, on Sunday that he feels environmentalism is the culmination of his life's work.

Shatner described a song he co-wrote with writer and television producer Robert Sharenow called "So Fragile, So Blue" about the planet. Shatner said his hope is that artists like Barbra Streisand will join him in singing the song, whose lyrics include "What can we do about our Earth?"

"It becomes the rallying cry to save the Earth," said Shatner, 91. "That's what I think my calling is from here on in."

Beyond Fest screened three of Shatner's movies from the 1970s: Kingdom of the Spiders, The Devil's Rain and Impulse. In the Q&A after the marathon, Shatner said his recent flight into space via Blue Origin inspired his emphasis on environmental causes.

"I look at the big, palpable, ugly, deathlike blackness of space," Shatner said of his trip. "And I think, 'Dammit, life.'"

Shatner said he began to weep when the Blue Origin capsule landed. After taking a moment to compose himself, he said he realized he was grieving for the planet.

As examples, Shatner said the extinction of species and air pollution were among the phenomena that troubled him.

"Everything is sacred," Shatner said. "It's disappearing and we're killing it. That's what I was grieving about."

As Star Trek's Captain James T. Kirk, Shatner explored fictional planets and alien species. Now, he says, he intends to spend his remaining years raising awareness about our planet.

"We humans have the gift of realization, of awareness," Shatner said. "Everything is unified. We're all entangled, and that's what I came away with."

Not that Shatner expects his remaining years to be so few. He joked that he still expects to live another few decades.

"I'm going to die soon, 20, 30 years, what have you," Shatner said. "But, look, I'm so healthy, I'm so involved in everything and I'm so happy."

Asked by an audience member what he's learned in his life, Shatner debunked the notion that with age comes wisdom.

"I don't think as you get older, you acquire any wisdom," Shatner said. "You're not gifted and all of a sudden at age 72, I'm wise now. No, man."

Shatner said he caught the end of 1974 horror thriller Impulse, in which he plays a serial killer. He said he was pleased to see audience members covering their eyes.

Shatner said that "low-budget films are a roll of the dice," including his recent Senior Moment. Shatner continued to praise the entrepreneurial spirit of independent filmmakers, who have to raise funding to support their creative enterprise.

Shatner did recall anecdotes about making each of the three films. In Impulse, a scene in which Shatner's character kills Harold Sakata's almost turned deadly in real life.

The scene called for Shatner to ensnare Sakata in a noose and hang him. However, the cable attached to his safety harness failed, so Shatner held Sakata up until the crew could remove the noose.

"This is my broken finger," Shatner said. "I broke it saving Harold Sakata."

In The Devil's Rain, Shatner plays a man battling a satanic cult and his own ancestor in flashbacks. Shatner recalled meeting Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey, who consulted on and appeared in the film.

"I love those people," Shatner said. "I had the best time talking to people like that to find out if they really believe what they're saying. And if they do, where'd they get that from?"

 

In Kingdom of the Spiders, Shatner plays a veterinarian who encounters a swarm of venomous spiders. Shatner said he worked with real non-lethal tarantulas and even glued one to his face for one scene.

"There's a Mexican tarantula that won't kill you," Shatner said. "It's just horribly painful so you'll live through the pain."

U.S. Southwest's Famous Cacti Are in Trouble

A photo essay

Molly Taft - Monday

An Iconic Species
“For me, what’s so wonderful about saguaros is really kind of the way that they move people,” Swann told PBS. “And a lot of people who live here will tell you that one of the reasons they live here is because of this plant.”


A saguaro in the Sonoran desert near Apache Junction, AZ.

One of the Southwest’s most familiar plants may be in deep trouble. The towering, multi-armed saguaro cactus, which is found only in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, California, and parts of Mexico, has faced increasing instability as climate change alters its natural habitat through droughts and wildfires. The cacti can live well over a century and are culturally important to the tribal nations native to the Sonoran, as well as crucial to the larger ecosystem of the desert.

“We’re trying to understand how changes in temperature and precipitation in the future might affect the reproductive potential of saguaros, everything from how old they are when they start reproducing to how many flowers do they produce,” Don Swann, a biologist at Saguaro National Park, told PBS.
Long-Lived Giants


Saguaro in the desert.

Saguaros stick around for a while: They can live on average between 150 and 175 years and generally don’t reach maturity until 35 to 65 years old. This longevity helps the cacti survive the extremes of their natural habitat, as the cactus’s resilience to drought increases as they grow. Older cacti are able to store large amounts of water and withstand unusually dry seasons. Smaller cacti, meanwhile, generally rely on the moisture in the ground to survive and may not last through a season where the soil is dried out. Younger cacti generally need several seasons of favorable growing conditions with plentiful rains to develop to maturity.

Fewer Younger Cacti


A fallen saguaro rots

Experts say that there have been fewer and fewer younger cacti around as climate change has intensified drought conditions. A 2018 survey conducted by the National Park Service in Saguaro National Park found that, of 10,000 cacti surveyed, just 70 were under 15 years old.

“Although the population of saguaros in Saguaro NP is quite healthy, establishment of young saguaros has nearly ceased since the early 1990s in nearly all habitats,” the report concluded.

Younger Cacti Are Less Resilient


A flowering saguaro cactus.© Photo: Hal Beral / VWPics (AP)

“The older they are, the more resilient they become to deeper and deeper droughts, right?” Swann told PBS. “So they’re very resilient when they’re 60 years old, but they’re not very resilient when they’re 5 years old.”

Invasive Plants Also a Problem


A forest of saguaro cacti among other plants.

© Photo: Jon G. Fuller / VWPics via AP Images (AP)

It’s not just high temperatures that are threatening the cacti. Invasive plant species like buffelgrass have been increasingly showing up in the saguaro’s habitat over the past 20 years. This grass can provide fodder for the wildfires that sweep through the desert.

Saguaro at Danger From Wildfire


Saguaro cacti at sunrise.© Photo: Charlie Riedel (AP)

Saguaros are not adapted to withstand wildfire, and these blazes have been devastating to the cacti. The Bighorn Fire, which was sparked by lightning and burned nearly 120,000 acres between June and July 2020, killed an estimated 2,000 cacti.

Non-Native Grasses Fuel Fires


The Carefree Complex Fire, which burned through the Sonoran

 in 2005, rolls toward a stand of saguaro cacti.

© Photo: Jeff Topping (Getty Images)

“We have this increase of non-native grasses, the grassification of the Western United States and in many of the deserts,” Ben Wilder, a desert ecologist, told PBS. “And that drives a fire regime and introduces a fire regime to the desert that’s pretty novel.”

Cacti Don’t Have Time


A close-up of a saguaro’s spines.© Photo: Jon G. Fuller / VWPics (AP)

The 2018 NPS survey also found that younger saguaros had been spotted growing recently in rocky areas, which could suggest they’re leaching moisture from water caught in the rock cracks. But the long growth period of the cactus means that the rapid climate changes we’re seeing in the West may not give the plants enough time to adapt to the new conditions.

An Iconic Species


Saguaro framed against oncoming monsoon clouds.

Photo: Mario Tama (Getty Images) unless otherwise attributed

“For me, what’s so wonderful about saguaros is really kind of the way that they move people,” Swann told PBS. “And a lot of people who live here will tell you that one of the reasons they live here is because of this plant.”

U$A

Gannett takes 'millions' to print fake conservative news that critics say 'cross the line into propaganda'

Raw Story - 7h ago
By Travis Gettys


Man reading Newspaper (Shutterstock)© provided by RawStory

The biggest print purveyor in the news industry has been taking money to publish fake newspapers supporting Republican candidates, highlighting mugshots of Black crime suspects, and mocking LGBTQ people.

Gannett -- which also publishes the conspiratorial Epoch Times -- hasn't commented on its publication of phony newspapers in Illinois such as “West Cook News” and “Chicago City Wire," which appear to be linked to Florida-based conservative talk show host Dan Proft, who has targeted Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

"The fake newspapers previously were printed by a Chicago suburban newspaper, the Daily Herald, but the owner canceled the contract on Sept. 22 after Pritzker publicly chastised the company and refused to participate in a candidates’ debate sponsored by the Daily Herald," the Post-Dispatch reported. "Proft’s company, Local Government Information Services, then took its business to cash-strapped Gannett, lamenting that it had paid 'millions of dollars' to the Daily Herald’s publishing company, Paddock Publications, over a period of several years."

The publications have been repeatedly caught by fact-checkers for peddling misinformation, and their coverage of Pritzker's GOP challenger Darren Bailey appears to have lifted talking points from his campaign promotional materials.

READ MORE: Self-described 'incel' admits plot to massacre women at college

The phony newspapers are also oddly fixated profiling Chicago-area teens with notably low rankings in youth tennis.

“It has all the appearance and trappings of an official news organization, and it’s trying to hitch a ride off the credibility of newspapers built over time,” said Peter Adams, senior vice president of education at the News Literacy Project. “This crosses the boundary into propaganda.”

 

Students across country walk out, allege LGBTQ discrimination at religious schools

'You can just see there's this pattern and movement happening of students and employees at these Christian universities finally saying, ‘enough is enough,'' said Chloe Guillot, a graduate student at Seattle Pacific University.

Photo by Angela Compagnone/Unsplash/Creative Commons

October 10, 2022

By 

Alejandra Molina

(RNS) — Queer students like Veronica Bonifacio Penales, who have been protesting religious university policies they call discriminatory and homophopic, often find themselves confronting the same question: “Why would you go to a Christian school if you are LGBTQ?”

For many of these students, this fight at religiously affiliated universities is part of a larger push happening from within Christianity toward more inclusive beliefs to, as activists at Seattle Pacific University put it, “deconstruct harmful theologies on sexuality, gender and queerness.”

And, as they’ve reminded their thousands of social media followers: “You can be queer and Christian.”

“We shouldn’t have to compromise where we go because they don’t want to accept who we are,” said Penales, a student at Baylor University, a Baptist school in Waco, Texas. “Baylor has taught me what I don’t want my religion to be.”

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RELATED: Are the culture wars changing how Christian students choose colleges?

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Within the last two years, students at religious schools across the country have made headlines pushing back against university policies regarding LGBTQ students or staff.

They’ve staged a monthlong sit-in at Seattle Pacific University, a private school associated with the Free Methodist Church, against a policy that forbids the hiring of LGBTQ people. They’ve called on Baylor University, that affirms marriage between a man and a woman as the “biblical norm,” to officially recognize an LGBTQ student advocacy group. They’ve protested at Brigham Young University after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which operates the school, said same-sex romantic behavior was “not compatible” with university rules, despite the removal of the “homosexual behavior” section from its Honor Code, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Veronica Bonifacio Penales. Photo courtesy of Penales

Penales, along with students at more than 100 campuses, are now planning to walk out of school on Tuesday (Oct. 11) to, among other things, protest religious exemptions to Title IX that they say allow for the discrimination and erasure of LGBTQ students. They’re urging for Title IX enforcement so all faculty, staff and students, including those who are LGBTQ and from minority communities, “have the ability to exist completely as themselves.”

Organized by the nonprofit Religious Exemptions Accountability Project and the Black Menaces — a group at BYU, which has expanded to numerous college campuses and has gone viral for their TikTok videos interviewing their largely white peers about issues concerning race — the walkout will be happening at religious, public and secular campuses, including high schools. The nationwide student protest, dubbed “Strike Out Queer-Phobia,” coincides with National Coming Out Day.

Students from Azusa Pacific University, an interdenominational Christian school in Southern California, will be walking out as they demand gender and sexuality training for staff and faculty. They also want staff and faculty to be allowed to include their pronouns in email signatures. LGBTQ singer and songwriter Grace Baldridge and other local artists will be performing nearby after the walkout.

At Denver University, students will be walking out in solidarity with queer students at BYU. And at Western Illinois University, Casa Latina Cultural Center will be participating as a way to urge “institutions to implement Title IX to these religious universities who are exempt.”

“We are privileged here at WIU, especially since students are protected by Title IX,” they wrote.

“We’re all fighting for each other,” said Sebastian Stewart-Johnson, a junior at Brigham Young University, and one of the leading organizers of the walkout. Stewart-Johnson, who was raised Mormon, is one of the founders of The Black Menaces.

“I can’t fight for POC (people of color), or Black people without fighting for queer people,” he said.

The Black Menaces in late August urged mandatory anti-racism training and sessions for staff, faculty and students after a Duke volleyball player, who is Black, alleged she was repeatedly called a racial slur by someone sitting in BYU’s student section. BYU said its investigation —which included the review of video and audio recordings as well as outreach to more than 50 people at the event — found no evidence that fans used racial slurs.

Sebastian Stewart-Johnson, right, interviews people during the Salt Lake City Pride Parade on June 5, 2022. Photo by Rabbecca Torres Moak, courtesy of Stewart-Johnson

After Black Menaces chapters became active on other campuses this summer, Stewart-Johnson said he’s noticed that students in religious campuses answer their questions differently. They’re emboldened by religion, he said, “to push out their ideas, regardless if those are homophobic or racist, because they feel like God is empowering them.”

To Max Perry Mueller, a historian of race and culture, “the work to address racism within Mormonism falls to people not in the center but on the periphery of Mormonism,” he wrote in an essay in Slate. He noted in his essay that restrictions that banned Black people from full membership in the LDS church remained in place until 1978.

Mueller said it’s crucial for university faculty, staff and nearby residents to listen to student activists.

“They’re going to be future alumni who care about the institution … They’re coming into adulthood here so they have a vested interest,” Mueller told RNS. “With any institution … you have a better sight line when you’re on the margins.”

According to Paul Southwick, director of the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, universities like BYU have ​​a “system of discrimination that is on the brink of collapse.”

Last spring REAP filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education on behalf of dozens of LGBTQ students at federally funded Christian colleges and universities.

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RELATED: Are LGBTQ students at Christian schools discriminated against? A lawsuit, scholarly studies say yes.

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The younger generation, Southwick notes, went to schools where they were taught critical race theory and to question “the white values that they were taught in their white churches.”

“They are done being told that in order to be a good Christian, that means you must be a white, straight Christian, or embrace white, straight Christian values,” Southwick said. “This is a crisis because the (university) boards are so out of sync with their youth that it will essentially be an inescapable crisis for them.”

A number of these schools are part of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, a global association of more than 180 Christian higher education institutions. Campus attorneys, public relations professionals and outside counsel gathered at a CCCU conference in late September to talk about Title IX and accreditation concerns. The conference was set to feature a “public relations crisis simulation and discussions about how to ensure mission fidelity legally and through good policy.”

Social media post for the “Strike Out Queer-Phobia” protest. Screen grab

Amanda Staggenborg, chief communications officer for the CCCU, said the council “encourages free thought and ideas as protected in the First Amendment.”

“We also support our member institutions and their commitment to Biblical standards in their mission work. We ask for peaceful debate, not campus disruption, as cultural issues are discussed and challenged in academia,” Staggenborg told RNS through email.

Tensions over LGBTQ-related policies have particularly intensified this year at SPU, where students will also be walking out.

Students and faculty have sued leaders of the school’s board of trustees for refusing to end the hiring policy. Additionally, the Washington state attorney general is also investigating SPU for potential illegal discrimination against LGBTQ people due to the school’s hiring practices.

“Our story is not unique,” said Chloe Guillot, a graduate student at SPU who is listed as a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the board of trustees. “You can just see there’s this pattern and movement happening of students and employees at these Christian universities finally saying, ‘enough is enough.’”

While students and faculty claim the trustees’ position threatens SPU’s reputation, school leaders see the blowback as a violation of the university’s right to religious freedom. SPU leaders have sued the state of Washington to “protect its freedom to choose employees on the basis of religion, free from government interference or intimidation.”

But the way Guillot sees it, “it’s not about us persecuting you for your religion, because we share your religion.”

At Baylor, Penales said she has found her voice in “advocating for this work.” 

The university earlier this year granted its first charter in history to a new LGBTQ-focused student group, but its statement on human sexuality that upholds “purity in singleness and fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman” still stands, the Texas Monthly reported. The LGBTQ advocacy group that Penales is involved with remains unchartered.  

Penales, who is also a plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit filed by REAP, is a main organizer of the walkout. She loves Baylor so much, she said, that she is willing “to continue this work to make a change.” But, she added: “I love me more to also do that work.”

This story has been updated.