Ben Shapiro Is Talking Nonsense About the Left Undermining Families


Ben Shapiro absurdly says that the Left supports gay marriage to undermine families and turn us into “atomized individuals.” 

The reality: leftists oppose social atomization, and we want all families to have the economic support they need.

Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro speak at Daily Wire Presents Backstage Live at Ryman Auditorium, on October 12, 2021 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Keith Griner / Getty Images)

BYBEN BURGIS
 Jacobin

With a bipartisan majority of sixty-two to thirty-five, the Senate voted this week to advance the Respect for Marriage Act, which protects same-sex marriage from a judicial reversal like this summer’s Supreme Court ruling on abortion. In response to Justice Clarence Thomas’s hint that the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision invalidating state laws against same-sex marriage might be the next on the chopping block after the court overturned Roe v. Wade, the Respect for Marriage Act enshrines marriage equality into law.

And that has popular conservative commentator Ben Shapiro fuming. He has insisted that no one who thinks marriage can be “redefined” to include gay couples belongs in the Republican Party, and framed support for equality as part of a left-wing agenda to undermine the family and reduce the citizenry to “atomized individuals” with no relationship to any social institution except for the state. In one particularly bizarre rhetorical flourish, Shapiro said that even Martians would oppose undermining marriage and family by letting gay couples in the club.

Every part of this is nonsense. Marriage isn’t undermined by letting more people get married, and the Left has no interest in turning people into family-less atomized individuals. Unlike Shapiro, we aren’t interested in telling people how to conduct their personal business. But we do want to create a more equal society that meets everyone’s material needs — and in so doing provide a foundation of economic security that will support anyone who does want to get married and start a family.
Ben Shapiro and the Visitors From Mars

In the decades before Obergefell, adamant opposition to gay marriage was a winning issue for the Right. Culture warriors like Rick Santorum, who infamously compared letting gay couples get married to allowing “man on dog” marriages in a 2003 interview, reveled in the controversy. Even the supposed “compassionate conservative” George W. Bush used anti-same-sex marriage ballot initiatives to get out the conservative vote in the 2004 election.

Democrats back then didn’t show much courage on the issue. For example, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both opposed marriage equality when they were running for president in 2008. But public opinion had shifted dramatically by the time the Supreme Court acted in 2015. By 2011, about 60 percent of the public supported equality. Now that number is north of 70 percent — including 55 percent of Republicans.

Unsurprising, then, that the vote to advance the Respect for Marriage Act was bipartisan. Thirty-five Republicans opposed it, but twelve broke ranks to vote with Democrats. Even some conservatives who oppose the law have pretended that their issue isn’t with same-sex marriage per se, but “religious liberty” for churches that oppose it. (Reality check: No law about civil marriage forces any church to do anything, and the Respect for Marriage Act specifically says that no church is required to perform same-sex ceremonies.)

But Ben Shapiro will have none of this evasion. In fact, he’s angry at progressives for assuming that the “argument for marriage,” by which he means the argument against letting gay people get married, must have a religious basis. Here’s what he said in a conversation with fellow conservative Matt Walsh:

I’m highly annoyed by the constant derogation of nonreligious arguments into religious arguments. This is what the Left loves to do. They love to say, you’re pro-life? The reason you’re pro-life is because of your crazy religion. So maybe we can respect your crazy religion. Well that is not the argument for marriage. The argument for marriage has literally nothing to do with religion. You could be a — a visitor from Mars — and you could see that human procreation relies on man woman child. This is not particularly difficult stuff.

Speaking for myself, following the thread of this argument actually does strike me as fairly difficult stuff. Does Shapiro think that straight couples will have fewer kids because gay couples are allowed to get married? Does he think married gay people would marry and procreate with people of the opposite sex if only the state withdrew legal recognition from their current marriages? Does he know about adoption and in vitro fertilization?

It’s true enough, as Shapiro has bemoaned, that some people will simply choose not to get married in a society that doesn’t trap people in loveless marriages by making it difficult to get divorced or forcing women to economically rely on men, and that even married straight couples with access to birth control don’t always choose to have kids. That’s called “freedom,” and it’s a good thing.
Real “Pro-Family” Policy Doesn’t Require Dissolving Anyone’s Marriage

Not everyone wants the same thing out of life, and that’s fine. But more than enough humans want to start families. No matter how much our society liberalizes on such questions, the visitors from Mars don’t have to worry about having a continuous supply of humans to probe.

In fact, a great many Americans who would love to have kids (or have more kids) don’t do so for straightforwardly economic reasons. A survey published by the New York Times four years ago found that, among people who had or expected to have fewer kids than they wanted, by far the most common reason was “child care is too expensive.” In fact, six of the top seven reasons — respondents were allowed to select multiple reasons — were straightforwardly economic.“Child care is too expensive” (64 percent)
“Want more time for the children I have” (54 percent)
“Worried about the economy” (49 percent)
“Can’t afford more children” (44 percent)
“Waited because of financial instability” (43 percent)
“Not enough paid family leave” (39 percent)
“No paid family leave” (38 percent)

To the extent that many of the respondents saying “want more time for the children I have” would have more time if they could afford reduced working hours, that takes us from six to seven. The United States is the only country in the developed world, and one of the only countries of any kind, that doesn’t legally mandate that employers give people even one lousy day a year of paid vacation.

If these people aren’t having as many kids as Ben Shapiro, it’s not because marriage and family have somehow been devalued by giving gay people equal rights. It’s because we live in a neoliberal hellscape. Our society does indeed reduce people to atomized individuals, but the Left is not responsible for that — in fact, a Left agenda seeks to directly address this problem by securing higher wages, better conditions and benefits, and more free time for working people.

At least if we’re talking about the actual Left, not just “anyone to the left of Ben Shapiro,” the Left wants people to have paid vacation and paid family leave and universal daycare. And for anyone who does want to be a stay-at-home parent, we want a strong labor movement to win everyone the kind of wages that it would take to make single-parent households — or households where one or both parents work part-time so they can spend more time with their kids — a more realistic possibility for a wider range of the population.

If you want to actually help people start families, that’s what it looks like. You don’t need to legally dissolve gay people’s marriages to make any of that happen. And you can leave the Martians out of it.


CONTRIBUTORS
Ben Burgis is a Jacobin columnist, an adjunct philosophy professor at Morehouse College, and the host of the YouTube show and podcast Give Them An Argument. He’s the author of several books, most recently Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for FAMILY VALUES 

U$A
Hospitals Are Full of Kids Sick With RSV—And Anti-Vaxxers Think It’s a Hoax
Different virus, same old disinformation.
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KIERA BUTLER

Senior EditorBio |  Mother Jones

An infant sick with RSV receives a breathing treatment.

graphixchon/Getty Images

Across the country, children’s hospitals are reporting record numbers of admissions—not just from Covid, but also from a host of other seasonal respiratory viruses. Particularly worrisome among these is respiratory syncytial virus, more commonly known as RSV. The illness, which can make breathing difficult for young children and elderly adults, can be fatal, typically killing a few hundred children and as many as 10,000 seniors every year. Drug companies have been trying for years to develop a pediatric vaccine for the virus with little success—until last month, when Pfizer announced that it would seek approval for its new shot after clinical trials showed it was extremely effective. Pfizer’s RSV vaccine, which is given to pregnant women before delivery so that they can pass antibodies on to the developing fetus, was hailed by pediatricians as a major accomplishment.

Yet it didn’t take long before anti-vaccine activists began to distort the facts about this vaccine and others in the pipeline. Some of the most prominent have suggested that pharmaceutical companies are exploiting the current RSV surge in order to create a market for their forthcoming shots. Joseph Mercola, the influencer who built an empire on spreading health misinformation, made this argument in a rambling article he published earlier this month. “The fact that RSV is now being highlighted as a severe risk is understandable,” he wrote, “in light of the fact that the first-ever RSV vaccines are now in the pipeline.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the founder of the anti-vaccine advocacy group Children’s Health Defense, swiftly tweeted that article out to his 481,000 followers.

Dr. Kristina Bryant, a pediatrician who specializes in infectious disease at Norton’s Children Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that any attempts to portray the current RSV surge as a marketing ploy are demonstrably untrue. Her hospital recently had to add extra bed capacity due to the overwhelming number of RSV cases. She pointed out that RSV numbers were lower in the last few pandemic years because more people were wearing masks, which prevent the spread of respiratory diseases. But before the pandemic, the cases of the disease regularly strained hospitals during particularly intense surges. The virus, she said, has “been a concern for pediatricians and parents for a long time,” she said. “RSV is real.” The virus has “been a concern for pediatricians and parents for a long time. RSV is real.”

The current surge in RSV misinformation has also alarmed Aoife Gallagher, an analyst with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an anti-extremism think tank with offices in Europe and the United States. At the beginning of the fall, during the start of the current wave of RSV cases, Gallagher said, she observed that the most widely shared tweets about RSV came from trustworthy medical authorities. When she ran the same analysis earlier last week, though, she found that seven of the top 10 tweets repeated conspiracy theories or misinformation.

The sources of the false RSV narratives, she found, were well-known anti-vaccine activists. Del Bigtree, the host of an online anti-vax show called The Highwire, falsely claimed that Covid vaccines were responsible for RSV infections. Judy Mikovits, the discredited virologist behind the Plandemic Covid conspiracy film, falsely suggested that RSV (along with Ebola and Zika) could be cured with the drugs hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

Some of the misinformation that Gallagher found contained violent ideology. In an interview earlier this month with right-wing TV host Stew Peters, Stella Immanuel, a physician and former Trump adviser who suggested that reproductive health problems were caused by having dream sex with demons, claimed that mRNA RSV vaccines were part of a grand plan to surveil citizens. “They want to make sure that the mRNA technology gets into everybody because their whole idea is to monitor the whole of the human race,” she said. “They want surveillance under the skin like The Matrix, like a human cyborg.” Peters chimed in that if he were president, public health officials who promoted Covid vaccines would be “immediately arrested, indicted, tried. and if convicted, they would be fried—publicly executed.”

As troubling as the wild and rapidly spreading RSV myths are, Gallagher says they aren’t surprising. Nearly three years after the emergence of Covid, she says, a pattern of infectious disease misinformation has emerged. After public health officials sound an alarm about an outbreak and well-established anti-vaccine networks mobilize, they quickly pump their narrative into social media channels to be picked up by influencers. “If you even go back to the monkey pox surge, at the start of the summer, we saw the same thing,” she says. “With any news of a virus or disease outbreak, we expect to see the same tropes used and recycled.” “With any news of a virus or disease outbreak, we expect to see the same tropes used and recycled.”

Not all of the false narratives around RSV have to do with vaccines—some attack public health measures more broadly. Another promoter of RSV conspiracy theories is the Southern California-based anti-vaccine crusader Leigh Dundas, who gained prominence during Covid by leading efforts to harass public health officials who promoted mask mandates, helping to orchestrate the anti-vaccine trucker convoys, and riling up a DC crowd ahead of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. Earlier this month, public health officials in Orange County declared a health emergency in response to rapidly rising rates of pediatric hospitalizations due to respiratory viruses. The declaration was meant to allow general hospitals to open up more beds to sick children—yet Dundas claimed that the true intent was to usher in another era of lockdowns. At a comment session at an Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting on November 2, she compared public health officials to Nazis, adding, “You will not mask us! You will not quarantine the well or the sick!” The clip, Gallagher noted, made the rounds on social media, with 6,000 reactions, nearly 5,000 shares, and 1,000 comments on Dundas’ post about it on Facebook. A tweet with the clip was retweeted more than 5,000 times.

Gallagher sees the current wave of RSV misinformation as part of a larger movement to erode trust in public health in the wake of the pandemic. Earlier this month, I wrote about the ominous downturn in rates of routine childhood vaccination rates in Florida. Pediatricians there told me they believed that misinformation around Covid vaccines had scared some parents off of immunizations more broadly. Bryant, the pediatrician, said she, too had noticed “more vaccine hesitancy, not just about Covid vaccines, but more questions about routine vaccines.”

“We’re starting to see the impacts of the broadening of anti-vaccine campaigns over the last few years,” says Gallagher. “But I think it’s going to be years down the line until we really come to terms with the effect they’re having.”

Africa: Criminalisation Has Hurt Sex Workers and Perpetuated the Aids Pandemic. UNAIDS Welcomes South Africa's Call to End It.

Ashleigh Furlong/GroundUp

Sex work activists protest outside the Western Cape High Court (file photo).

4 DECEMBER 2022

UNAids (New York)

Responding to the decision of South Africa's Cabinet to propose a Bill that will repeal criminalisation of sex work, UNAIDS Country Director Eva Kiwango said:

"The evidence is clear: Criminalisation has been proven to have increased the risks faced by South Africa's sex workers, hurt their health and safety, and obstructed South Africa's HIV response.

UNAIDS welcomes South Africa's Cabinet's proposal to repeal criminalisation and to protect sex workers against abuse and exploitation.

Criminalisation has impeded South African sex workers' access to vital health-care services, including effective HIV prevention, treatment, care and support services.

To end AIDS, we need to repeal the harmful punitive laws which are perpetuating the pandemic. To save lives, decriminalise."

Note: The statement by South Africa's Cabinet on their agreement to propose repeal of criminalisation is published at https://www.gov.za/speeches/statement-cabinet-meeting-30-november-2022-1-dec-2022-0000 under "Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Bill of 2022". The Bill will now be published for public comment.

UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations--UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank--and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals. Learn more at unaids.org and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

Read the original article on UNAIDS.

Nearly 1,700 seals found dead on Russia’s Caspian Sea coast: officials

By Staff The Associated Press
Posted December 4, 2022 

About 1,700 seals have been found dead on the Caspian Sea coast in southern Russia, officials said Sunday.

The authorities in the Russian province of Dagestan said that it’s still unclear what caused the animals’ deaths, but they likely died of natural reasons.

Regional officials initially said Saturday that 700 dead seals were found on the coast, but on Sunday Zaur Gapizov, head of the Caspian Environmental Protection Center, said according to the state RIA Novosti news agency that after a broader inspection of the coast the number of dead animals was 1,700.

Gapizov said the seals likely died a couple of weeks ago. He added that there was no sign that they were killed by poachers.

Experts of the Federal Fisheries Agency and prosecutors inspected the coastline and collected data for laboratory research, which didn’t immediately spot any pollutants.

Several previous incidents of mass deaths of seals were attributed to natural causes.

The data about the number of seals in the Caspian varies widely. The fisheries agency has said the overall number of Caspian seals is 270,000-300,000, while Gapizov’s center put the number at 70,000.

0:44

Video shows footage of seal trying to steal from crab trap

Despite stark gender inequality in South Korea, hostility to feminism is growing

Ambivalence and hostility to feminism exists despite stark inequality in South Korea, where women face the greatest wage gap of the 38 mostly high-income, developed member countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Pedestrians are silhouetted as they walk in Seoul, South Korea, on May 4, 2022. 

Lee Jin-man / AP file


Dec. 4, 2022,
By Haeryun Kang

SEOUL, South Korea — Lee Yunju has poked her head in the feminism aisle of the library at her university in Daegu, South Korea. But she is hesitant to do more than that.

“I feel cautious even picking up a feminist book,” said Lee, 22, a student in robotics engineering. “Lots of Koreans feel very antagonistic toward feminists and feminism, so we don’t even talk about it.”


Lee is one of 16.3 million people who voted for Yoon Suk Yeol this year as president of South Korea, a U.S. ally and the world’s 10th-largest economy. The country has long struggled to address gender inequality, ranking 99th out of 146 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2022 report. Now, women’s rights groups and opposition parties worry the country’s gender inequality could worsen under the conservative government, saying Yoon has capitalized on anti-feminist backlash.

Experts say Yoon struck the biggest nerve among younger male voters by pledging to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, arguing that discrimination is now an individual issue, not structural, and that the ministry no longer has reason to exist. The subject is one of the most polarizing of Yoon’s presidency, creating an uncertain future for a government body that supporters say is vital for promoting the rights of women, children and families.

In October, the Yoon administration unveiled plans for a new Health Ministry department that would absorb the functions of the gender ministry, part of a broader organizational shake-up that is now being considered by South Korean lawmakers

.

President of South Korea Yoon Suk Yeol.

DPA via Getty Images file

“It is time for the country to shift from a paradigm of women’s policies, focusing on improving discrimination against women, to a paradigm of gender equality for both men and women,” Interior Minister Lee Sang-min said in the government’s announcement.

The plan may have difficulty passing in the national legislature, where the opposition Democratic Party has a majority. Public opinion polls on the issue are mixed, including among people Lee’s age.

“I don’t think any of my friends support keeping the ministry,” said Lee, who lives in one of South Korea’s most conservative regions, referring to both male and female friends. Lee said she felt ambivalent as well.

This ambivalence exists despite stark inequality in South Korea, where women, though highly educated, face the greatest wage gap of the 38 mostly high-income, developed member countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In South Korea, women make up 19% of lawmakers, compared with 27% in the U.S. Congress, and 4.8% of executives at the country’s top 100 companies, according to a study by headhunting firm Unicosearch. There are currently three women in Yoon’s 19-member Cabinet.

Gender and feminism played an unprecedented role in the presidential election in March, which Yoon won by less than 1%, the closest in South Korean history. Both Yoon and his main opponent, Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung, used gender issues to appeal to young voters who have become a crucial swing bloc.

Yoon, a former prosecutor, blamed feminism for the country’s low birth rate, said he would increase penalties for false accusations of sexual crimes, and denied the existence of “structural discrimination based on gender.” He accused the gender ministry of treating men like “potential sex criminals.”

“When Yoon became president, I felt devastated,” said Woo Ah-young, a 30-year-old office worker in Seoul who identifies as a feminist. “I’m not exactly sure what will happen in the future ... But I feel like my life will become more tiresome.”

 

31Days of Feminism: ‘Fighting to Make the World a Better Place’1:56

Just five years ago, during the 2017 election, endorsing feminism was a bipartisan trend. Moon Jae-in, who won by a record 17 points, declared himself a feminist in his campaign, as did his conservative rivals. But by the end of his term this year, the tides had turned drastically. Anti-feminist voters, particularly young men in their 20s, emerged as a political force, rooting for Yoon and his People Power Party.

According to a 2019 survey by local news outlet SisaIN, 60% of men in their 20s showed a considerable to extreme aversion to feminism.

“They believe they are being discriminated against,” Cheon Gwan-yul, the journalist who led the survey, said at the time. Like opponents of feminism in other parts of the world, respondents argued that the movement promotes female supremacy and misandry.

“Aversion to feminism is shared across generations, but men in their 20s express it most aggressively,” said Park Jeonghoon, author of “There’s No Such Thing as a Good Man,” a book that discusses the anti-feminist backlash among young men in South Korea. “I think it’s because of a uniquely Korean situation: They have to go to the military.”

South Korea, which technically remains at war with neighboring North Korea, requires all able-bodied men ages 18 to 28 to serve at least 18 months in the military, causing delays in their education and early career that are perceived as giving women an advantage.

“I felt similarly in my 20s,” Park, now 34, told NBC News. “I was forced by the state to serve. I couldn’t resist against the state … I became angry that women weren’t going.”

Another common theory for the anti-feminist backlash points to Moon’s failure to curb youth unemployment and runaway housing prices, along with the rise in inequality.

“The sentiment now is, ‘Who took what’s mine?’” said Chung Hyun-back, a former gender minister for Moon. “People are frustrated with the economic inequalities and their worsening personal situations — where do these frustrations go? In some countries, it’s refugees or migrant workers. In South Korea, it’s the gender issue.”

To some, the gender ministry is a symbol of what they see as the excesses of feminism. In a public petition earlier this year that received over 50,000 votes, the ministry was described as being “unconstitutional” and “inciting gender conflict.”

“Maybe the ministry’s policies benefit women, but I don’t feel it as a man,” said Daniel Kim, a 33-year-old office worker in Seoul who agrees the ministry should be abolished but does not identify as anti-feminist.

The gender ministry was founded in 2001 under the Kim Dae-jung administration, South Korea’s first left-leaning government. For the past two decades, it has championed women’s rights, including playing a key role in the 2008 abolition of South Korea’s “hoju” system of family registration, which had been criticized as male-dominated.

The ministry has fewer than 300 employees and the smallest budget of any department: 1.47 trillion won ($1 billion), about 0.24% of all government spending. According to a study last year by the Korea Women’s Development Institute, 80% of that budget is allocated to family-related projects, including supporting single parents, while 9.2%t is used for victims of sexual and domestic abuse. Only 7.2% goes to policies specifically targeting women.

Supporters of the ministry say its work benefits a range of people, including men.

“Of course women in some classes, especially the upper levels, are well off, even superior to some men,” said Woo, the feminist office worker. “But women don’t live monolithic lives. There are different women in a variety of situations. The gender ministry aims to protect the marginalized in our society. This protection must continue.”

Chung, the former gender minister, said Korean society has benefited from discussing the ministry’s future: “People are now more aware of how important this gender issue is.”
Haeryun Kang

South Korea's Yoon prepares to widen back-to-work order amid truckers' strike


South Korean nationwide strike by truckers, in Hampyeong County

Sat, December 3, 2022 
By Choonsik Yoo and Josh Smith

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Sunday ordered preparations for widening a back-to-work order beyond the cement industry amid a prolonged truckers' strike.

Thousands of South Korean truckers have been on strike for more than 10 days, with negotiators for the government and unions making no progress on disagreements over minimum pay rules.

Yoon, a conservative, on Tuesday invoked a "start work" order, the first in the country's history, on 2,500 drivers in the cement industry, requiring them to return to the road or face penalties.

On Sunday Yoon called on government ministers to make preparations to issue a return-to-work order on such sectors as oil refining and steelmaking, where additional damage is expected, spokesperson Lee Jae-myoung said in a statement.

Yoon called for punishment of those violating laws during the strike, ordering ministers to take action to minimise damage, such as employing alternative drivers, military personnel and military equipment.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, an umbrella group, is planning a general strike for Tuesday.

"I cannot but regard this planned strike as a politically motivated action, rather than one aimed at representing the workers' rights," Yoon said, according to Lee, signalling a potentially harsh reaction from the government.

"Holding the people's living and national economy hostage at this time of economic difficulty makes the survival of weak, unorganised workers harder and deprives future generations and the general public of their future jobs," Yoon said.

The strikes have disrupted South Korea's supply chain, and cost 1.6 trillion won ($1.2 billion) in lost shipments over the first seven days, the industry ministry said on Thursday.

The government has said it would not expand a minimum pay system for truckers beyond a further three years. The union says it should be permanent and wider in scope.

Thousands demonstrated in downtown Seoul on Saturday in support of the truckers' demands.

(Reporting by Choonsik Yoo and Josh Smith; Editing by William Mallard)

Every-10-year religious study of USA shows some surprising numbers

Joe Raedle | Getty Images via AFP


John Burger - published on 12/04/22

Hispanic immigrants boosted the US Catholic Church by 2 million members over the past decade. Catholic Church largest US group.

Hispanic immigrants in the United States gave the Catholic Church a boost of 2 million members over the past decade, a new report says.

At 61 million adherents in more than 19,000 churches, Catholics are close to 19% of the U.S. population – the largest religious body in the country – according to the U.S. Religion Census (USRC), an every-10-years study carried out by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies.

Across the religious spectrum, there are 356,739 religious congregations in the United States. That’s one for about every 934 persons living in the US. But with 161 million adherents of some faith in the country, the overall average congregational size is about 451.

Since 1952, the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies has issued such a report every 10 years. Its latest came out November 11, covering the years 2010-2020. It gathers information from religious bodies and maps out the number of congregations and adherents on a county level.

The U.S. Religion Census was originally conducted by the U.S. government in five special reports from 1890 through 1936. In 1952, the National Council of Churches organized its own religion census, which was repeated in 1971 and 1980 with strong support from Glenmary Research Center, which supports and assists the Catholic Glenmary Home Missioners by providing applied research to Glenmary leadership, individual missioners, Church leaders and the wider society.

Since 1990, the census has been conducted by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. Coverage now includes many non-Christian groups as well as special counts for religious traditions that do not have central data collection points, such as non-denominational churches or Muslim and Jewish communities.

The latest study also found that:The Catholic Church is the largest denomination in 1,231 counties (the US has 3,143 counties).

Non-Christian bodies continue to increase their presence. The number of Muslims, for example, increased from 2.6 million to 4.5 million. The USRC includes congregation counts of five other non-Christian bodies, and congregation and adherent counts for Baháʼí, three Buddhist groups, three Hindu groups, and four Jewish groups.

Oriental Orthodox Christians have surged but Eastern Orthodox have decreased.

Southern Baptists have the most churches of any religious group: 51,379.

There are some 44,319 nondenominational churches, a jump of nearly 9,000 over 10 years ago, and about 9 million adherents.

 
Southern Baptists and United Methodists each lost 2 million members from 2010 to 2020.

“Denominational brands have weakened, and divisions have increased over issues such as female clergy or sexual orientation,” said Scott Thumma, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. “This likely led some adherents to seek or even start new nondenominational churches.”

Rich Houseal, secretary-treasurer of the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, said the data is also useful to businesses. Walmart, for example, contacted him to help determine what books to stock in their stores based on the dominant religious group in a county.

Researchers said that among the 212 religious bodies participating in the 2010 and 2020 USRC, the number of congregations increased 2.2% and the number of adherents increased 6.5%, while the total U.S. population increased 7.4% during this time.

UK government could bring in military to ease strikes

DURING THE 1926 GENERAL STRIKE THEY DID UNDER WINSTON CHURCHILL
04 December 2022 -

BY ELIZABETH PIPER

The chairman of Britain's Conservative party, Nadhim Zahawi.
Image: REUTERS/Hannah Mckay/File Photo

The British government is looking at bringing in the military to help keep public services running if key workers, including in the state-run National Health Service, take strike action, the chairman of the governing Conservative Party said on Sunday.

Britain is already grappling with industrial action in a range of sectors, but now faces strikes by thousands of nurses in England and ambulance workers in England and Wales who plan to walk out later this month over pay and conditions.

The government has repeatedly called on workers to halt strike action, saying it could not afford pay rises to cover inflation and that, even if it could meet their demands, such increases would further fuel inflation.

“Our message to the unions is to say 'this is not a time to strike, this is a time to try to negotiate'. But in the absence of that, it is important for the government... to have contingency plans in place,” Nadhim Zahawi told Sky News.

“We're looking at the military, we're looking at a specialist response force... a surge capacity,” he said, adding that the military could be brought in to drive ambulances.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, in power for just over a month, faces a raft of problems, including what could prove to be a lengthy recession in the run-up to an election that opinion polls suggest the Conservatives will lose.

The Sunday Times newspaper reported that Sunak could revive plans to curb the right to strike for public sector workers, including NHS staff, teachers and firefighters, while the Sunday Telegraph said pharmacists could be drafted in to help patients if health workers strike later this month.

Zahawi again blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine for fuelling energy price rises and inflation, calling on public sector workers to “come together”.

“There is a minimum safety level of delivery in place already, but the NHS will look at all contingency planning,” he said.

Reuters

South Korea’s President prepares to widen back-to-work order amid truckers’ strike

Policemen surround a unionized trucker who speaks on a van in front of a cement factory in Incheon, South Korea December 1, 2022. (Reuters)

Reuters, Seoul
Published: 04 December ,2022: 

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Sunday ordered preparations for widening a back-to-work order beyond the cement industry amid a prolonged truckers’ strike.

Thousands of South Korean truckers have been on strike for more than 10 days, with negotiators for the government and unions making no progress on disagreements over minimum pay rules.

For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.

Yoon, a conservative, on Tuesday invoked a “start work” order, the first in the country’s history, on 2,500 drivers in the cement industry, requiring them to return to the road or face penalties.

On Sunday Yoon called on government ministers to make preparations to issue a return-to-work order on such sectors as oil refining and steelmaking, where additional damage is expected, spokesperson Lee Jae-myoung said in a statement.

Yoon called for punishment of those violating laws during the strike, ordering ministers to take action to minimize damage, such as employing alternative drivers, military personnel and military equipment.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, an umbrella group, is planning a general strike for Tuesday.

“I cannot but regard this planned strike as a politically motivated action, rather than one aimed at representing the workers’ rights,” Yoon said, according to Lee, signaling a potentially harsh reaction from the government.

“Holding the people’s living and national economy hostage at this time of economic difficulty makes the survival of weak, unorganized workers harder and deprives future generations and the general public of their future jobs,” Yoon said.

The strikes have disrupted South Korea’s supply chain, and cost 1.6 trillion won ($1.2 billion) in lost shipments over the first seven days, the industry ministry said on Thursday.

The government has said it would not expand a minimum pay system for truckers beyond a further three years. The union says it should be permanent and wider in scope.

Thousands demonstrated in downtown Seoul on Saturday in support of the truckers’ demands.

Concerns mount over global security implications of Turkish military strategy against Syria's Kurds

Experts say the Biden administration has plenty of leverage to wield privately in urging Erdogan to relent in the threatened escalated attack on Syrian Kurds.

Sunday 04/12/2022

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, walks with US President Joe Biden during the G20 leaders' summit in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, November 15, 2022. (AP)

WASHINGTON/ ANKARA—

Biden administration officials are toughening their language toward NATO ally Turkey as they try to talk Turkish President Recep Erdogan out of launching a bloody and destabilising ground offensive against American-allied Kurdish forces in neighbouring Syria.

Since November 20, after six people died in an Istanbul bombing a week before that Turkey blamed, without evidence, on the US and its Kurdish allies in Syria, Turkey has launched cross-border airstrikes, rockets and shells into US- and Kurdish-patrolled areas of Syria, leaving Kurdish funeral corteges burying scores of dead.

Some criticised the initial muted US response to the near-daily Turkish bombardment — a broad call for “de-escalation” — as a US green light for more. With Erdogan not backing down on his threat to escalate, the US began speaking more forcefully.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin called his Turkish counterpart on Wednesday to express “strong opposition” to Turkey launching a new military operation in northern Syria.

And National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Friday made one of the administration's first specific mentions of the impact of the Turkish strikes on the Kurdish militia, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, that works with the United States against Islamic State (ISIS) extremists bottled up in northern Syria.

How successfully the United States manages Erdogan’s threat to send troops in against America's Kurdish partners over coming weeks will affect global security concerns far from that isolated corner of Syria.

That's especially true for the Ukraine conflict. The Biden administration is eager for Erdogan's cooperation with other NATO partners in countering Russia, particularly when it comes to persuading Turkey to drop its objections to Finland and Sweden joining NATO.

But giving Turkey free rein in attacks on the Syrian Kurds in hopes of securing Erdogan's cooperation within NATO would have big security implications of its own.

US forces on Friday stopped joint military patrols with the Kurdish forces in northern Syria to counter ISIS extremists, as the Kurds concentrate on defending themselves from the Turkish air and artillery attacks and a possible ground invasion.

On Saturday, the US and Kurds resumed limited patrols at one of the detention camps.

Since 2015, the Syrian Kurdish forces have worked with the few hundred forces the US has on the ground there, winning back territory from the Islamic State extremists and then detaining thousands of ISIS fighters and their families and battling remnant Islamic State extremists.

“ISIS is the forgotten story for the world and the United States, because of the focus on Ukraine,” said Omer Taspinar, an expert on Turkey and European security at the Brookings Institution and the National War College.

 

Turkey's Defence Minister Hulusi Akar chairs a new air operation in northern regions of Iraq and Syria with members of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) command level at the Turkish Air Force Operations Centre in Ankara, November 20, 2022. (AFP)

“Tragically, what would revive Western support for the Kurds ... would be another ISIS terrorist attack, God forbid, in Europe or in the United States that will remind people that we actually have not defeated ISIS,” Taspinar said.

Turkey says the Syrian Kurds are allied to a nearly four-decade PKK Kurdish insurgency in southeast Turkey that has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people on both sides. The United States' Syrian Kurdish allies deny any attacks in Turkey.

US Central Command, and many in Congress, praise the Syrian Kurds as brave comrades in arms. In July, Central Command angered Turkey by tweeting condolences for a Syrian Kurdish deputy commander and two other female fighters killed by a drone strike blamed on Turkey.

In 2019, a public outcry by his fellow Republicans and many others killed a plan by President Donald Trump, which he announced after a call with Erdogan, to clear US troops out of the way of an expected Turkish attack on the Kurdish allies in Syria.

Then-presidential contender Joe Biden was among those expressing outrage.

“The Kurds were integral in helping us defeat ISIS — and too many lost their lives. Now, President Trump has abandoned them. It’s shameful,” Biden tweeted at the time.

The measured US response now — even after some Turkish strikes hit near sites that host US forces — reflects the significant strategic role that Turkey, as a NATO member, plays in the alliance's efforts to counter Russia in Europe. The US State Department and USAID did not immediately answer questions about whether the Turkish strikes had hindered aid workers and operations that partner with the United States.

Turkey, with strong ties to both Russia and the United States, has contributed to its NATO allies' efforts against Russia in key ways during the Ukraine conflict. That includes supplying armed drones to Ukraine, and helping mediate between Russia and the United States and others.

But Turkey is also seeking to exert leverage within the alliance by blocking Finland and Sweden from joining NATO. Turkey is demanding that Sweden surrender Kurdish exiles that it says are affiliated with the PKK Kurdish insurgents.

Turkey’s state-run news agency reported that Sweden extradited a member of the PKK and he was arrested Saturday upon arrival in Istanbul.

Turkey is one of only two of the 30 NATO members not to have signed off yet on the Nordic countries' NATO memberships. Hungary, the other, is expected to do so.

At a gathering of NATO foreign ministers in Bucharest, Romania, this past week, NATO diplomats refrained from publicly confronting Turkey, avoiding giving offense that might further set back the cause of Finland's and Sweden's NATO membership.

Turkey's foreign minister made clear to his European counterparts that Turkey had yet to be appeased, when it came to Finland or Sweden hosting Kurdish exiles there.

“We reminded that in the end, it’s the Turkish people and the Turkish parliament that need to be convinced,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters on the sidelines.

 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to talk Thursday with Finland's and Sweden's foreign ministers on dealing with Turkey's objections to their NATO accession.

Experts say the Biden administration has plenty of leverage to wield privately in urging Erdogan to relent in the threatened escalated attack on Syrian Kurds. That includes US F-16 fighter sales that Turkey wants but have been opposed by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez and others in Congress.

There's a third big security risk in the US handling of Turkey's invasion threat, along with the possible impact on the Ukraine conflict and on efforts to contain ISIS.

That's the risk to Kurds, a stateless people and frequent US ally often abandoned by the US and the West in past conflicts over the past century.

If the US stands by while Turkey escalates attacks on the Syrian Kurds who were instrumental in quelling the Islamic State, “especially in the aftermath of Afghanistan, what message are we sending to the Middle East?" asked Henri J. Barkey, an expert on Kurds and Turkey at the Council on Foreign Relations and at Lehigh University.

“And to all allies in general?" Barkey asked.

An ethnic group of millions at the intersection of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, Kurds lost out on a state of their own as the US and other powers carved up the remnants of the Turkish Ottoman Empire after World War I.

As under US President George H.W. Bush in 1991 after the Gulf War, the United States at times encouraged popular uprisings but stood by as Kurds died in the resulting massacres.

On November 28, hundreds of Syrian Kurds gathered for the victims of one of the Turkish airstrikes — five guards killed securing the al-Hol camp, which holds thousands of family members of Islamic State extremists.