#please check that statement against your moral principles

[loveerran]

In 2020, NBC did a survey of 45 states + Washington DC. Of 4,890 transgender women prisoners, only 15 were housed according to their gender identity. This despite the 1994 Farmer vs Brennan Supreme Court decision (Dee Farmer, a trans woman, had to file a lawsuit alleging her beating and rape violated 8th Amendment protections on her own - the ACLU didn't step in until it reached the Supreme Court), and studies consistent with this one that show trans women in prison are 13x more likely to be the object of violence, particularly sexual assault and rape. In the following comparison, all the white dots are transgender women who are not housed according to their lived gender identity, and the red dots are those who are:

We should also note that trans women, particularly black trans women, are far more likely to be incarcerated (10x more frequently than the general population) - possibly due to old and new laws that make it nearly illegal to be trans.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Tedious Joys - Chapter 2 -

- Ao3 link -

“If you want A-Jue at this time of day, he’ll be at the training field,” Lao Nie said, standing up and immediately striding off in that direction. “Oh, and Qiren, I will warn you – he has his mother’s height.”

Lan Qiren rolled his eyes as he followed behind. “That’s helpful information,” he remarked. “Right up until you recall that I have never had the pleasure of meeting his mother –”

He stopped talking and stared.

“I didn’t think a further explanation was necessary,” Lao Nie said. He wasn’t quite at the level of sniggering into his sleeve, but he certainly had a shit-eating grin. Lao Nie was not a short man by any standard, although he was squatter, more muscular and more broad-shouldered than the tall and slender Lan sect  – and yet…

“He’s under ten,” Lan Qiren checked, and Lao Nie nodded. “You’re sure.”

“I was present at the birth myself, and have cared for him ever since. And before you ask, I may be busy with my duties as sect leader, but I still feel like I would have noticed someone swapping him out for a child several years older.”

Lan Qiren squinted out at the training field, where a child (and it was a child, given the amount of baby fat in his cheeks, even if the overall size was more what he’d expect of a teenager) was happily dismembering a training dummy with an especially fearsome-looking saber under the tolerant supervisory gaze of the training master.

“Lao Nie,” Lan Qiren finally said. “About that first wife of yours…you would tell me if she were an actual giant – or a goddess –”

Lao Nie laughed and patted him on the back. He did not answer the question.

“A-Jue! Come here!” he shouted, and Nie Mingjue – demonstrating excellent discipline – completed his strike before turning around and trotting over to his father. “Say hello to Teacher Lan.”

“Teacher Lan,” Nie Mingjue said obediently, saluting properly like every small child introduced to a stranger, and then looked up. A smile suddenly spread over his face. “Oh, Teacher Lan! Fighting without permission is prohibited!”

Lan Qiren choked and Lao Nie burst out laughing.

“That was seven years ago,” Lan Qiren protested, and Lao Nie only howled more. “You were an infant. How do you even remember that?”

“It was interesting!” Nie Mingjue beamed. “You said that every word in the rule is like a principle – even if you have the rule, you have to agree on what it means. What counts as fighting, what counts as permission, what counts as prohibited…I use it lots!”

“He has a good memory,” Lao Nie said, wiping his eyes. “You should hear how many profanities he’s learned.”

“I would rather not,” Lan Qiren said hastily, because Nie Mingjue looked on the verge of volunteering to recite them. “Nie Mingjue, can you show me around?”

“Of course, Teacher Lan! Let me just put Baxia away first; I’m not allowed to carry her outside the training field yet. Unless there’s an accident, of course.”

Lan Qiren did not ask. As a sect leader who did not share a border with Qishan Wen, he didn’t think he had the right.

“Take your time,” he said, putting his hands behind his back and watching as Nie Mingjue ran away.

“Would it help to have me there?” Lao Nie asked, and nodded when Lan Qiren shook his head. “I’ll leave you two to it.”

Lan Qiren did not put forward any requests, curious to see where Nie Mingjue would take him, and was reluctantly charmed by the fact that their first destination was the nursery, where several pudgy toddlers of indeterminable age were sleeping.

“My baby brother,” Nie Mingjue explained, very seriously, inadvertently driving home that the fact that he was as tall as Lan Qiren’s elbow didn’t make him any older than he was. “He’s little.”

Lan Qiren couldn’t even tell which one of the indiscriminate toddlers wrapped in blankets was meant to be Nie Huaisang, but he nodded, and Nie Mingjue led him onwards, initially mostly silent with belated shyness but eventually coaxed into chattering.

In the evening, he returned to Lao Nie’s study.

“Well?” Lao Nie asked, face creased into the scowl he had on more often than not, despite being widely considered one of the more even-tempered Nie. “What do you think?”

“I think your son is a bright and enthusiastic boy,” Lan Qiren said. “With a remarkable sense of justice and morality that will serve him well, although maybe not so much in terms of politics. He’s very…straightforward.”

“Yes, well, I’m still holding out hope on A-Sang for the tact,” Lao Nie said. “That wasn’t my question and you know it.”

Lan Qiren tried to collect his thoughts. “I don’t think you’ve damaged him for life,” he finally said, and Lao Nie’s shoulders relaxed in a sudden exhalation of what was probably months of increasing stress. “I do think he would benefit from understanding a little bit more about what’s happening to him.”

“But he’s so young.”

“I know. Normally, I wouldn’t introduce the subject of his own mortality at this level of complexity this early – although I assume it’s hard for him to miss the concept entirely, given the political situation –” Lao Nie winced in acknowledgment. “– but I don’t think you have much of a choice. You’re not the only one who noticed the saber spirit.”

Lao Nie frowned, then understood, and frowned even deeper. “He’s noticed it?”

“I got him talking on the subject of his saber,” Lan Qiren said. “He regards it in the same manner as other children his age would an imaginary friend. It’s female, apparently.”

Based on the description, Baxia also had what he would, in one of his students, term a personality. He supposed it was possible that Nie Mingjue was just projecting the parts of himself that weren’t quite fit for company, since surely no one could be that earnest, and yet, based on what Lao Nie had told him…

Lao Nie groaned and put his hand to his head. “Jiwei didn’t develop a sense of gender for years,” he grumbled, and Lan Qiren was moderately certain that he hadn’t intended to admit that out loud. “This is ridiculous. I want him to live a good life, Qiren. A long one, insofar as that’s possible for our sect.”

“I’ll try to do some research,” Lan Qiren said. “In the meantime, could he be convinced to cultivate something else in addition to a saber? Music, perhaps?”

“You’re welcome to try. He’s practically tone-deaf.”

“Perhaps arrays, then, or talismans,” Lan Qiren said. “It would do him some good to find another thing to pour all that energy of his into.”

“I’ll think about it,” Lao Nie allowed. “And I appreciate any research you’re able to do, though of course there are limitations on your time – and what we can allow to be taken out of the Unclean Realm.”

Lan Qiren waved a hand. “It’s nothing. I enjoy keeping busy, and the subject is fascinating. Have you considered that regular visits by me might draw attention?”

Attention from within their sects they could handle, but they were both sect leaders – or acting sect leader, in Lan Qiren’s case – and their actions could never truly be wholly their own.

“I have a plan for that,” Lao Nie said. “It’ll work better if you don’t know about it, though.”

Lan Qiren hated plans like that.

“Very well,” he said, aware that he sounded like he was sulking. “If you must.”

“Could I send him to you next year?” Lao Nie asked, and Lan Qiren forgot his grumpiness to gape at him. “I wouldn’t impose this year, naturally, since you must already have a curriculum planned. But next year…”

“If you send him, that will be making a statement,” Lan Qiren said.

A statement about what, exactly, he did not know, but there was a major difference between being the sort of teacher that was respected enough to teach the sect heirs of some small, out-of-the-way sects and being entrusted with the childhood education of the heir to a Great Sect. Even if Nie Mingjue learned nothing, which seemed unlikely given his earnest performance from earlier, the other small sects would immediately want to follow suit, as if to rub off some of the same luck for themselves – he would be flooded with applicants.

His sect elders were going to hate it.

Although it wasn’t exactly against any of the rules…

“That’s why I’m asking your permission.” Lao Nie grinned at him, his teeth flashing white under his nearly trimmed beard. “Also, while you’re our guest here – you did plan to stay at least a week or two, right? Good, good. I will insist upon you joining me for some night-hunts.”

“Lao Nie…”

“I’ve explained to you how my sect cultivates our sabers. Are you really saying that you can judge that without seeing it happening?”

“You know perfectly well that I’m a weak fighter,” Lan Qiren said, even though that was a very good point, and one he probably would have insisted on himself sooner or later. “I don’t want to slow you down.”

“You never have,” Lao Nie said right to his face – the Nie sect did not discourage all lying, the scoundrels. “I’m serious! You’re not the fastest, no, but you’re perceptive, analytical, and creative. The insights I gain from hunting by your side are long-term gains, making me faster and more efficient in the future.”

“You’re flattering me,” Lan Qiren said suspiciously.

“I am not. The first time we went on a night-hunt together, you stopped by the river to rest and told me about how the flowers growing there were unique because they absorbed spiritual energy but not resentful energy on account of being too close to flowing water; three years later, I used that fact to find a gigantic nest of ghosts and demonic creatures that were using it as camouflage. They’d killed nearly a dozen villagers by that point and no one else could find them, but I did.”

Lan Qiren felt his ears heating up. “…that’s a coincidence.”

“Do you really want me to start naming other examples?”

“I would rather you showed me your library,” Lan Qiren said. He hoped he wasn’t blushing. He was probably blushing. No one else ever teased him the way Lao Nie did, except maybe Cangse Sanren. He was suddenly hit by a nostalgic desire to see her again. “At once, if you please. And also…”

He trailed off.

“Why the hesitation?” Lao Nie asked. “Do you really think there’s anything I would deny you, as long as you find a way to help my son?”

Lan Qiren cleared his throat. “It would be helpful if I could examine a more mature saber spirit that has already bonded to a human master. Your Jiwei, for instance.”

As he expected, Lao Nie scowled at the suggestion of someone else examining his spiritual weapon – and his saber spirit, no less – but after a few moments he collected himself and nodded, albeit begrudgingly. “I’ll leave her with you,” he said. “Be careful when you examine her – she doesn’t like to be touched by anyone but me.”

Lao Nie’s warning turned out to be both true, untrue, and an understatement of frankly shocking proportions.

During the course of Lan Qiren’s investigations into the subject of the Nie sect sabers over the next few months, and thereafter, he determined that the best, if not only, way to deal with Jiwei was to act as though he were handling a particularly vicious and single-minded dog.

Jiwei, it seemed, liked to bite.

If one treated her like a normal saber – an inert piece of metal – she would appear completely quiescent right up until there would be an abrupt and inexplicable accident, clattering off the table with the blade curving straight at clothing and flesh, and only very quick reflexes could prevent disaster. If one attempted to utilize spiritual energy with her, it would be even worse: she would pull as much as she could and feed back nothing, spiteful and ruthless.

A vicious creature, too quick to judge, loyal only to her master, who she loved.

A bit like Lao Nie, in fact. Lan Qiren did not delude himself into mistaking Lao Nie’s passion for righteousness – Nie Mingjue was righteous, a serious child that was always wondering what was right, while Lao Nie was more inclined towards brutal, even callous, practicality that focused on what benefited him and his sect. He would do good, of course, but he could not be forced into it; he had his pride, his temper, and sometimes he erred too much in favor of those over even common sense.

But despite all his rough edges, he did truly love his friends.

He dragged Lan Qiren all over Qinghe whenever he visited, on night-hunts and to resolve minor conflicts, the sort of thing any normal traveling cultivator might do; he showed him the small towns and the hidden cities that Lan Qiren would not have seen on any normal visit, and asked him to play songs for his little family. Nie Huaisang was enraptured by the music, Nie Mingjue largely indifferent – Lao Nie had not been wrong to call him practically tone-deaf – and Lao Nie beaming all the while, even if Lan Qiren suspected that his eldest son’s lack of musical appreciation had largely come from him.

He even, after a stray comment, managed to track down Cangse Sanren, who brought her husband and son to the Unclean Realm and left them in Nie Mingjue’s earnest care while she sat with the two of them, drinking liquor as if it were water to the point that even Lao Nie refused to compete with her – when his protests were eventually overridden, Lan Qiren (who drank tea, of course) was roped in to be their long-suffering judge.

It was a good night.

“Is that another thing I took from you?” He Kexin unexpectedly asked Lan Qiren a week after Lao Nie had publicly announced that he would be sending Nie Mingjue to the Cloud Recesses for Lan Qiren’s classes. The ensuing hubbub, as Lan Qiren expected, had been enormous, and he’d braced himself to discuss nothing else for months, although he hadn’t really expected her to mention it.

The Cloud Recesses separated men and women, and He Kexin had borne two sons; they were old enough by now to live primarily with the men rather than the women, and so they had entered Lan Qiren’s care. He brought them to visit her once a month, and came himself like clockwork every two weeks in between to update her as to their progress, his eyes fixed firmly above her head as he narrated the report as if he were a junior returning from a night-hunt. It was not her fault that his brother had fallen in love with her and ruined Lan Qiren’s life, but it had been her decision to murder a man that had served as the trigger for the situation; Lan Qiren was meticulous about his duty to her as his sister-in-law, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. Or her.

By this point, she was moderately good at respecting that. In the beginning, she’d cursed him viciously every time he came to see her, especially after he’d provided her with definitive proof of her former friend’s lies and machinations. Later, she’d tried flirting with him out of what he could only assume was boredom or perhaps a willful misunderstanding as to why he still visited, assuming that he had perfidious motivations or shared his brother’s taste in women instead of suffering from an overdeveloped sense of responsibility for his brother’s misdeeds. It had taken him several months and, eventually, an explicit offer to even notice, and he’d nearly broken his neck fleeing from the scene.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” he said, still looking above her head instead of at her face. He Kexin had A-Huan’s smile and A-Zhan’s eyes, he knew that, but if he could scrub all of her other features from his mind, he would.

“Sect Leader Nie,” she said, and it was so odd to hear someone refer to Lao Nie by his formal title outside of a political situation or deliberate insult – even Wen Ruohan habitually called him Lao Nie by now, and as far as Lan Qiren could tell, they despised each other – that Lan Qiren’s eyes actually dropped to meet hers. “If you weren’t sect leader, you could’ve married him.”

Lan Qiren choked on air. “Do you think of nothing but sex all day?” he spat out, his cheeks going red. “We are friends.”

“I don’t have much else to think of,” He Kexin said, and he glared as if to communicate whose fault is that and maybe in your next life you won’t solve your problems with murder. “I heard you’ve been spending a lot of time with him, and now he’s sending his son to your care. It’s suggestive.”

“Talking behind the backs of others is forbidden,” Lan Qiren reminded her, and she shrugged. “Do I need to discipline your servants?”

“It’s news, not gossip,” she said. “And no, these ones are fine. No one’s playing any tricks.”

There had been an incident early on, where a few of the servants assigned to care for He Kexin had mistaken her confinement for abandonment; they had not expected Lan Qiren to grimly continue visiting as he would have done if she had been his sister-in-law in the normal course of things, nor to listen when she complained. He had of course taken all necessary measures to have the offenders harshly disciplined and expelled, replaced with servants of good character and sufficient intelligence to keep her company without seeking to take advantage, and there had been no new incidents since.

Her punishment was confinement, not torment. No matter what Lan Qiren felt about her, she would receive exactly that – neither more nor less.

“Is it Cangse Sanren, then?” she asked, propping her head up on her chin. “You fell in love with her, and then she married another man…”

“Sometimes people are just friends,” he said, irritated. “Why must I be in love with anyone?”

He Kexin shrugged. “Don’t you want to marry, one day? Have children of your own, rather than always reporting back to me on mine?”

“I’m acting sect leader,” Lan Qiren said tightly. “A marriage, much less children, would give rise to accusations that I was seeking to usurp my brother’s place or my nephews’ inheritance.”

“So it is another thing I’ve done,” she said, looking down at her hands. They were clenched tightly into fists, her knuckles white; sometimes Lan Qiren thought she wanted to punch him as a means of venting her feelings, and sometimes he didn’t even blame her for it. “I had only been thinking about it in the sense that you couldn’t leave, but you can’t even bring anyone back.”

“I don’t especially want to, anyway,” he said, because it was true. Even if she was right, that even his right to marry freely had been taken from him, it didn’t mean that she had the right to use it as a whip on her own back. If Lan Qiren couldn’t bring himself to obey the rule about not holding grudges, he could at least follow the ones about being generous and easy on others. “I haven’t found the right person.”

“And it’s really not Lao Nie?” He Kexin asked. “You go to visit him often, and for longer periods, than you go anywhere else, and A-Huan says you look happy whenever you’re going to go.”

Lan Qiren shrugged. He was happy to go. He enjoyed Lao Nie’s company, and the research, even when Lao Nie was too busy for him personally, and Lao Nie’s role as an allied sect leader meant that Lan Qiren had more latitude in arranging such visits than he did to other places.

“…A-Zhan says that your hands are white when you return.”

Lan Qiren’s eyes dropped to his arms, where there was in fact some white peeking out from beneath his sleeves – white bandages on his left wrist and the two smallest fingers on his right hand, this time, from the latest incident in which Jiwei had tried to slash him, but it was barely a nick in comparison with previous instances; he thought that it was a sign that they might be getting somewhere.

A moment later, he realized the implications of her statement and glared at her. “You’re not seriously asking if Lao Nie is abusing me? Weren’t you asking about my marriage prospects with him only a moment ago?”

“The two are not mutually exclusive,” she said dryly. “And the Nie temper is well known.”

“It’s from research,” Lan Qiren said. “I dropped a saber and I knocked over the table on to my other hand when trying to dodge.”

“I believe you,” she said, lips twitching. “If only because you would’ve come up with a more dignified excuse if it was a lie.”

“I don’t actually have to explain myself to you,” he said, reminding himself as much as her. “Is there anything else you want to know about your sons?”

“No,” she said. “But I’d like my husband to visit me again, if you can arrange it.”

He nodded stiffly.

“You know,” she said, playing idly with her sleeves. “If you never marry, I’ll be the closest thing you ever have to a wife? You manage my house, you raise my children, and you even provide me with services in bed, albeit indirectly.”

Do not succumb to rage, Lan Qiren thought to himself, and left without another word.

(Later, when Cangse Sanren next visited the Cloud Recesses, her husband taking A-Huan on a ride on their donkey with A-Zhan and A-Ying tucked into the saddlebags, she listened to him stammer through the whole humiliating story and gnashed her teeth on his behalf. “Don’t listen to her,” she told him. “By that standard, the rabbits she likes to raise are her concubines.”)

His simmering anger made his next session with Jiwei flow more easily, almost as if the saber spirit empathized with his rage – or perhaps it was simply that she found it more familiar, more reminiscent of the temper of her true master, and therefore less objectionable. He was attempting to draw out some part of her anger through music and store it into a jade pendant: his theory was that the eventual qi deviations of the Nie sect leaders resulted from a lack of balance with the resentful energy utilized by the saber spirit – the negative emotions streaming in through the saber, strengthening it, but having no means of cleansing beyond outbursts of temper.

It had been the way Nie Mingjue spoke of his saber spirit as if she were his friend that had given him the idea. Many in the Nie sect treated their sabers with both reverence and fear, as if the spirits were vicious creatures they had only temporarily tamed and which would one day turn upon them, but Jiwei was passionately loyal to Lao Nie, and Baxia to Nie Mingjue. Perhaps it was his inheritance as a Lan showing, or merely his own experience with his brother, but Lan Qiren simply could not understand how anything that loved so unstintingly, so unreservedly, could ever bring themself to intentionally bring about their beloved one’s destruction.

Even a dog would refuse to bite a master it loved unless it had gone mad.

Therefore, he concluded, it was not merely the human wielder but the saber itself that deviated in their cultivation. Lao Nie had once said in an aside that it was unclear what came first, the Nie sect tempers or the saber spirit-incited outbursts, and although he had meant it as a joke, Lan Qiren thought there was some merit to the question. Rage served a valuable purpose for humans, acting as a warning sign that something was wrong, that something was unacceptable, rejection and protection all at once, but rage that could not be excised would turn rancid and sour, like a poisoned wound. Sabers were cultivated by their masters and resembled them – they were filled with human rage, intensified by their cultivation of resentful energy, but unlike a human they could not shout or hit something or vent in any way other than through hunting.

No wonder Jiwei was so content after a night-hunt; no wonder Nie sect cultivators got irritable when they hadn’t had time to cultivate their sabers or fight evil or just get out and do something. But with limited venting opportunities (humans could not fight evil all the time), the sabers would fall into obsession, infected by the very same resentful energy that they excised when they hunted – their bloodlust simultaneously sated and inflamed – and as their power grew, and their true opponents grew fewer, they would become insatiable and, eventually, unbalanced. Demonic cultivation was abhorred by the cultivation world because it opened the door to obsession and fixation, and the most common way that demonic cultivators died, if not executed by the world, was through a backlash of their own power. Obsession was by its nature rigid, and that was the sole weakness of the saber: they had to be rigid, but never too rigid, or else they would become brittle, would break.

Deviation.

It was a very interesting theory, even if Lao Nie’s eyes glazed over whenever Lan Qiren tried to explain. Lan Qiren didn’t take offense: Lao Nie had always been an exceptionally practical man, more interested in results than theories, actions rather than thoughts.

“Aren’t you disappointed?” Lan Qiren asked him at one point, abrupt as he always seemed to be about such things. “That I haven’t gotten anywhere?”

Lao Nie looked surprised. “What do you mean? You have a valid theory, you’ve tried all sorts of things.”

“I haven’t succeeded.”

Lao Nie laughed. “My friend, this is a problem that has stymied my sect for generations. Did you really think you’d be able to solve it in three weeks?”

Lan Qiren scowled. “It’s been closer to three years.”

“You’ve made progress,” Lao Nie said confidently. “A-Jue has as solid a foundation as I could hope for, and all those conversations you have with him about the nature of ethics and morality have had an excellent effect on his saber.”

“Has it?” Lan Qiren asked, skeptical. Even the Nie sect experts agreed that Baxia was unusually vicious for a saber, powerful enough to frighten wild yao simply with her presence – Nie Mingjue’s cultivation remained shockingly fast, and even Lan Qiren, who had only a few years understanding of the saber spirits, could recognize the effects of it.

“It has,” Lao Nie said firmly. “He doesn’t fear her, and she loves him all the more for it, backs him like none other; no other saber of his generation will so much as waver out of line with Baxia behind them. As for the rest…ah, Qiren, if you can figure out a way to stymie the saber spirit even a little – give him even another decade – I’ll be satisfied. Don’t worry about it.”

Lan Qiren huffed and returned to trying to transfer spiritual energy from Jiwei to the pendant.

“Besides, all this time spent on the project has had at least one good effect,” Lao Nie added, putting his hand on Lan Qiren’s shoulder as he played. “I get the pleasure of your company.”

Lan Qiren’s attention was fixed on his playing, but the hand was warm on his shoulder. “That hardly seems so much of a benefit,” he said absently.

“You underestimate yourself. Do you know, outside of my sect, I think you’re my best friend?”

Only years of training allowed Lan Qiren’s fingers to continue to move smoothly over the guqin strings when his heart seized in his chest, warm and hot and squished and painful and pleasurable at the same time.

He did not allow himself to ask “Really?” like a small child, insecure and uncertain, did not permit himself to say “even above my brother”, did not say anything at all.

“Thank you,” he finally said, stiff and wooden. “I…you as well.”

[duchessofostergotlands]

I woke up to my once-beloved Labour party going mad. Dawn Butler insisting that babies are born without biological sex, Lisa Nandy saying she’d abolish the monarchy but would like to see a Queen Meghan (as if a privately educated American Queen will make the most hierarchical, colonial and privileged institute in the world any less colonial, hierarchical or privileged) Why do they not understand the right battles to pick and what the public actually wants? Are they saying mad things for PR? (1)

(2) Like I’m the most Laboury Labour person there ever was. I’m a socialist, I vehemently support the LGBTQ+ community, I try to be environmentally friendly AND I’m the child of immigrants. But even I know that not all things need to be said or fought for, especially in the fraught post-Brexit environment we’re struggling through today. We can’t afford to have people who put their foot in their mouths leading us, especially those who don’t understand why they they shouldn’t. (/3) We don’t need to earn the support of people like me, but people who are unsure, and this is not the way to do it. I’m sorry for the rant, I’m just frustrated and hopeless. I’m the anon who once said we have higher standards of ethics for Labour than the Tories, but as we’ve seen this past decade, if we want change we’re going to need to play this game better. We need amiable, reasonable politicians who assess both the room and the nationwide feeling and play on that. Not whatever this is.

Hey :) Ugh they're a bunch of idiots. Of the leadership candidates I think RLB and Keir are the only ones who haven’t shown outright contempt for Scotland - with Nandy even saying she would handle us the way the Spanish handled Catalan aka we’re all getting our heads kicked in - so I guess Keir is the lesser of the various evils for me

This is going to be potentially controversial but I’ll say it anyway. Labour are in a very difficult position at the moment. Being inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community is important to a lot of young people and Londoners. A more democratic system of government is important to us. But the so called Red Wall - the people who once voted Labour with dedication but went Tory - largely don’t give a shit about trans rights or whether we have a House of Lords. Like if you look at that fact checking thing where the Tories pretended to be an independent fact checker to trick people it barely influenced opinions at all. To people in that Red Wall, politicians are always going to lie so who really cares if they make a stupid twitter account if they’re “protecting”’your job or cutting your taxes? They’re not usually actively protesting against equality or democracy but it just is not remotely of interest to them. That’s part of the disconnect between educated, young, politically active voters and older, white voters. If they turn on a party leadership conference and hear them talking about LGBT rights or the monarchy they just tune out because it has no relevance to their every day lives. So they’re kind of in the position of having to please two groups of people. Do they prioritise a platform like this which is more inclusive and progressive and will engage younger people - who still don’t vote in large numbers -  but totally alienates the traditional Labour voters or do they quietly sideline those more “woke” topics and focus on courting the lost voters at the possible cost of losing the hard left and the youth vote and seeming homophobic, transphobic etc. For me personally LGBTQ+ rights and democracy are incredibly important but that’s not always the case for people outside the bubble and it’s costing Labour votes. They’re almost torn between the moral and the pragmatic. And because they can’t seem to get their shit together what they end up doing is just pleasing no one and making ludicrous, inaccurate statements. 

I have no clear answer for what to do and I’m not a Labour party member so I have no say, but I think they’re in an incredibly delicate position and it is a huge issue. Do you do what’s moral or what’s strategic? Does being moral matter if you can’t even get in to power? Does getting in to power matter if you gave up on your principles to get there?

[criticalotterstudies]

To Dworkin's admirers, she was a hot-rod combination of martyr and holy warrior, a survivor of sexual abuse who dared to speak truth to power. To her critics, she was a raging harpy who rose up out of nowhere, intent on taking away their porn and (some of the male ones vaguely suspected) their manhood. With law professor Catharine MacKinnon she wrote an ordinance (passed by the city of Indianapolis) that defined pornography as a kind of speech crime that violated the civil rights of all women -- the law was later overturned as unconstitutional. She testified before the infamous Meese Commission on pornography, forming what many saw as a dangerous alliance with the radical right. She was said to have written that all heterosexual intercourse was the equivalent of rape, though she denied that the passage in question amounted to such a claim.

Dworkin was a gifted, galvanizing communicator, both in print and as a public speaker. She was the Jonathan Edwards of radical feminism, capable of calling ecstatic souls to her cause, transforming her listeners and readers in ways many of them never forgot, even if they eventually came to disagree with her. (See Susie Bright's eloquent eulogy for an example.) She could inspire impromptu Take Back the Night marches and the instant formation of anti-violence groups, sincere efforts to do something to check the abuse that real women really do suffer every day, even if the response to it in this case was more ideological than practical.

But Dworkin was also a pioneer of a particular and pernicious type of rhetoric, one currently being used much more effectively by talk radio hosts and the extreme political right. Here's a classic example: During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Dworkin quarreled with feminists who did not consider Bill Clinton's sexual encounters with the White House intern to be sufficiently exploitative to merit impeachment. A principled, reasonable argument could be made that Clinton's behavior was unethical, but Dworkin was never about reason. "What needs to be asked," she told a British journalist, "is, was the cigar lit?"

The statement (it seems too sensationalistic to be called a quip) is pure Dworkin: a ghoulishly creative melodramatic flourish that has little bearing on the matter at hand. Clinton may have acted sleazily, with a callous disregard for the emotional consequences of his actions on a young woman who was too naive and eager-to-please to grasp them herself, but no one suspects or has accused him of sadistically torturing her. Yet Dworkin was never able to enter into a conversation about morality unless the stakes were escalated to the stratosphere. The everyday realm where most of us commit our minor sins against, and injuries to, each other didn't really interest her. She only cared for the Grand Guignol.

Dworkin came out of and contributed to a subculture of feminism that specialized in this kind of irresponsible overstatement. A certain style developed: Throw out a handful of lurid, grisly anecdotes as if they amounted to an indictment of an entire class of people (usually men), who, if the worst of them can be shown to be guilty of such outrages, must all be equally responsible for them. The shock will soften your audience up enough to keep them from asking just how typical such atrocities really are and how widely condoned. Yes, they do happen, but like the handful of kidnapped little girls during the summer of 2002, such horrors can be made to seem epidemic when they're actually a rarity. Meanwhile, the much less exciting, if far more common, troubles of women who are simply trying to feed their children on inadequate wages, or get a decent job, fall by the wayside.

After this came the dodgy statistics, the one out of every four women said to have been raped in her lifetime, the alleged upsurge in domestic violence reports after the Super Bowl, and other mediagenic numbers. If these "facts" later turned out to be wobbly (or, in the case of the Super Bowl story, an outright hoax), many women's advocates rarely seemed to grasp the damage they'd done. After all, they were only calling attention to real, pervasive problems, which rape and domestic violence unquestionably are.

But here's the rub: If you get sloppy with the truth, then anyone who doesn't feel like dealing with those problems can happily devote himself to quibbling with your numbers instead. Does it really matter that much whether it's one women in four who will be raped, or one woman in 10? Or 20? It's still too many, and it needs to be stopped. Good luck getting that done while everyone's busy arguing about your stats.

The ravaged, bruised and mutilated women who parade through Dworkin's writings can seem as insubstantial as these numbers. As described by her, they're like the characters in an urban legend or campfire story, like the girl who finds the bloodied hook hanging from the car door handle. She tells their stories with an unseemly relish, and they're portrayed as completely and utterly helpless and abject, with no one to turn to but their equally brutalized yet indomitable champion. "Heartbreak" professes to be the testament of someone who has devoted herself to abused women, but the only three-dimensional human being who emerges from the book's Sturm und Drang is Dworkin herself. It's a mistake to equate a writer's work with how she lives her life, so let us hope that, in person, Dworkin managed to treat these women as more than rescue objects.

Perhaps in recent years Dworkin was pleased to see support for her own ideas in the theories of evolutionary psychologists who argue for the innate aggression of male sexuality, and even go so far as to suggest that men are born to rape. Probably not, though; she would have likely seen it as an excuse to go on raping. The very opposite of self-reflective, she never reconsidered her position on porn, so she surely never wondered what all the time and energy feminists spent on the "Sex Wars" of the 1980s might have accomplished if it had been redirected toward helping abused women gain the financial and emotional wherewithal to reclaim their lives. Her contribution to the discussion on most issues failed the ultimate litmus test: Even when she was right, she made the public conversation stupider. (Though some of her opponents, who could rarely resist ad hominem remarks about her appearance, surpassed her even in that.)

https://www.salon.com/2005/04/12/dworkin_3/

[jennycalendar]

very really married (11/15)

read it on ao3!

we’ve reached That Part Of The Fic where everything i say will be a spoiler. so. shall just say that i’m very happy w this chapter and leave it at that

Giles thought he might have minded overseeing the talent show quite a bit more if not for Jenny. Bothersome as it was to be expected to take time away from his duties as a Watcher, he couldn’t quite get over how delightful it was to spend that time entirely with his wife, who had been forcibly delegated to help at his side. Much like him, Jenny was quite pleased about the close proximity that this allowed them, but she wasn’t at all happy that Snyder was very clearly trying to get back at her for not passing any of his failing athletes.

“It’s a complete lack of administrative integrity!” she was ranting, painting violent splashes of color across the backdrop for the first act. A splotch of paint very nearly hit Giles, who winced anyway. “He’s using his position for something petty and stupid! If I could just, like, wait till he’s inevitably killed by something, then take his job—”

“—my library would be digitized already, I’m sure,” Giles finished, and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. She smiled a little tiredly, relaxing at his touch. “And for the record, usurping the position of our utterly odious supervisor, no matter how suited you yourself are for it, errs a bit on the side of unprofessionalism.”

“Just a bit,” said Jenny, mouth twitching.

“Just a bit, yes.” Giles was doing his best to tone down public displays of affection in the workplace, if only because of the many objections raised by Buffy and Xander (Willow didn’t seem to mind), so he settled for taking her hand and lightly kissing the knuckles. Her smile softened. “You’ll be finished with the backdrop in a minute, yes? Cordelia’s up next to rehearse her act and I, ah,” he winced delicately, “may need the moral support.”

“Of course,” Jenny agreed.

Just as Giles was about to head towards the auditorium, he heard the clatter of footsteps. Turning with slow reluctance, he saw Buffy, Willow, and Xander rounding the corner. “Kindly don’t put me through the wringer,” he said ruefully. “This was certainly not my choice.”

“Yeah, Snyder roped us into it,” said Jenny. “Willow, can you help me with this backdrop?”

“What? Oh!” Willow, blushing nearly as red as her hair, all but tripped over herself in her hurry to help Jenny.

“Buffy—” began Giles, attempting to replicate Jenny’s casual tone.

“Nope,” said Buffy.

“Lovely,” said Giles. “Can’t as much as get a word in edgewise before I’m shot down.”

“Hey, I mostly showed up to take on your traditional role!” said Buffy, grinning. “You know, watching? This’d be really funny to watch if it was just you doing it.”

“Yeah, too bad you and Ms. Calendar are rocking the whole showbiz-couple thing,” added Xander, who had somehow been commandeered into painting Jenny’s section of the backdrop. “Otherwise, you can bet we’d be laying on the constant mockery.”

“I’d help,” said Jenny, and kissed Giles on the cheek, leaving a green handprint on the shoulder of his vest. She winced. “Whoops.”

“Marriage to you, my love, is a series of unexpected consequences,” said Giles, smiling slightly. “I would never have signed up if I didn’t enjoy them.”

Jenny opened her mouth, then shut it. She’d gone a bit pink.

“Oooh, Giles has game!” Buffy teased, then grimaced. “And that’s a sentence I never wanted to say. Or hear.”

“Um,” said Jenny, and cleared her throat. “We should go out and watch Cordelia, huh?”

Giles extended his arm. Jenny took it. They were about to exit the backstage area when Principal Snyder entered, looking as ill-tempered as always. “Unprofessional,” he informed Giles and Jenny’s linked arms. “And what are those three doing here? They didn’t sign up for the talent show.”

“We just wanted to check in on Mr. Giles and Ms. Calendar!” babbled Willow. “Ms. Calendar’s my favorite teacher, she’s really great—”

“Save the praise, Rosenberg,” said Snyder, glowering. “All three of you left campus yesterday.”

“Yeah, but we were fighting a—” Buffy was cut off by a swift elbow to the side from Willow.

“Fighting?” Snyder echoed, eyes gleaming.

“Not fighting!” squeaked Willow.

“Yeah, we left to avoid fighting,” Xander added.

Giles and Jenny exchanged a look.

“Real antisocial types,” said Snyder. “You need to integrate into this school, people.” Crossing his arms, he said decisively, “I think I just found three eager new participants for the talent show.”

“What?” said Buffy.

“No!” said Xander.

“Please?” said Willow.

“Actually, Principal Snyder,” said Jenny with a saccharine smile, “the kids are helping me out backstage. It’s not exactly performing, but Rupert and I could do with three extra pairs of hands. You know. Seeing as neither my husband nor myself have any theater background, but you put us in charge anyway.”

Principal Snyder stared at Jenny, eyes narrowed. “Are you contesting my authority, Ms. Calendar?”

A dangerously playful look in her eyes, Jenny opened her mouth. Sensing a potential calamity, Giles placed a hand at the small of his wife’s back—more a gentle reminder than a reprimand. She froze, looked up at him, and then sighed, turning back to Snyder. “No, Principal Snyder, I’m really not,” Jenny said reluctantly.

“We merely believe that these students would be better socially integrated through assigning them the work that’s already readily available,” Giles explained. “Not to mention that Jenny’s the most aware of what this production needs, seeing as her tireless work has largely contributed to the—”

“Save me the thesis statement, Mr. Giles,” snapped Snyder. “Just make sure those kids are put to work.” He turned, stomping out.

“Ms. Calendar, you’re a lifesaver,” said Xander emphatically.

“I think I’d have died if I’d had to perform,” Willow mumbled.

“I can’t take all the credit,” said Jenny, who was still glaring after Snyder’s retreating form. “Mostly I just wanted to stick it to Snyder. That man thinks he can come in and order me around just because he’s—”

“Our employer?” said Giles.

“Ugh,” said Jenny.

“Well, as long as I’m not reading some dumb monologue, I’m good,” said Buffy cheerfully, and went back to painting the backdrop.

“So,” said Giles. “Any thoughts on the talent show?”

“As soon as this thing’s over I’m setting the entire auditorium ablaze,” said Jenny, who was lying sprawled across the couch. She hadn’t yet taken off her jacket and heels, and didn’t look like she had the energy to. “I signed up for sponsoring maybe one school club at most, and now I have to listen to Cordelia Chase butcher Whitney Houston? God, I wish I’d been the teacher to end up headless in a freezer. At least then my ears wouldn’t hurt so much.”

“You have a very wonderful head,” Giles reminded Jenny, amused by her theatrics. “It’d be a shame for it to go missing.” He crossed the room, dropping a kiss to Jenny’s temple. She gave him a small, tired smile. “I’ll make you dinner, dear, how’s that?” he suggested.

“You always make dinner,” said Jenny, reaching up to play with his tie. “I want to order in.”

“It’s the principle of the thing, Jenny, I like taking care of you—”

“—and I like snuggling on the couch with you while we watch whatever’s on TV, which I can’t do if you’re all the way over there.” Jenny waved a hand in the general direction of the kitchenette. “I’m all achy and I’ve been on my feet painting for way too long and if I want my husband to cuddle me he should really just do what I say—”

Giles leaned down and kissed Jenny. “I’ll get your shoes off, if you like,” he offered.

“You’re the best husband,” Jenny mumbled. “You’re, like, the best husband.”

“Am I the best husband or like the best husband?” said Giles, tugging off Jenny’s shoes. “There’s a distinct difference.”

“God, I love you,” said Jenny, a half-laugh in her voice.

Absolutely everything that Giles had been thinking—perhaps we should order pizza, I need to restock the green paint in the school supply closet, what happens if this lie I continue to tell my wife has consequences I did not anticipate—came to a complete and utter standstill at those words. He tried to think of—something, anything beyond this terrifying, dizzying mixture of incredible elation and incredible horror, but nothing could come to mind. She loved him. She loved him, and she didn’t know he was a Watcher.

But before he could stumble through some sort of clumsy response, Jenny said shakily, and very fast, “I just meant—I mean, we’ve been spending a lot of time together, and—fuck. Rewind. Can I just, just take that all back?”

Giles felt a lump in his throat at the fear in Jenny’s eyes. “Do you want to?”

A beat. Then Jenny raised herself up on her elbows, pressing her mouth clumsily to his. It was a kiss without her usual finesse, but it was heartfelt in a way that Giles hadn’t ever thought he would experience, and he kissed her back with that same half-frightened urgency.

“I really didn’t mean to say that,” Jenny mumbled. This was not at all close to taking her words back. Giles’s heart was pounding as he pulled back to look at her. “You don’t have to—to say it back, I didn’t even mean to tell you now, I—”

Admitting to himself that he was anywhere close to loving Jenny meant admitting that Jenny needed to know he was a Watcher. Telling Jenny that someone she cared deeply for had been lying to her from the very first day they met would shatter her, especially after she had been so vulnerable with him not two weeks ago. “I don’t know if I—” Giles began, hating himself. Jenny deserved a man who could accept her love, something that (he realized this now) she was utterly unaccustomed to giving.

Jenny drew in a half-sobbing breath. “No, it’s okay, it’s okay,” she managed, bumping her nose against his. “It’s okay, it’s okay, I shouldn’t have—it’s waytoo soon, I know that, I just—”

Giles kissed her again, hoping that his actions might convey what his words couldn’t.

Jenny took a bit longer than usual getting ready for bed that night, and Giles stayed up to wait for her, flipping nervously through a book without really registering what he was reading. When she finally arrived, she hesitated by the door, looking apprehensively at Giles. “I, I can sleep on the couch,” she began.

“Come here,” said Giles quietly. “This doesn’t change a thing.”

“You promise?”

“Why on earth would I lie to you?” Giles asked, and winced.

Jenny didn’t seem to notice his discomfort. Her eyes were on her neatly painted toenails. “It was a moment of weakness, okay?” she said. “It wasn’t—I don’t—”

“Love isn’t weakness,” said Giles. “Who on earth told you that?”

Jenny didn’t answer.

Giles extricated himself awkwardly from the blankets, then crossed the room, stopping in front of Jenny. He tilted her chin up, then cupped her face in one hand. She leaned into his touch, closing her eyes. Something warm unfurled in his chest at the way her eyelashes fluttered, but…that wouldn’t do. For her protection, for the Slayer’s safety, for the sake of generations of secrecy, he couldn’t tell her he was a Watcher, and he couldn’t tell her he loved her.

He let his hand drop.

The murder of one of the dancers in the talent show didn’t help matters in the slightest. Buffy was convinced that the perpetrator was demonic in origin, which meant that Giles would inevitably be prodded into researching vague snippets of information. Emily’s friends were too distraught to continue their act, which meant an entire reconfiguration of the talent show. And Jenny…was making herself scarce, mostly, which left Giles with a terrible feeling in his chest. He had never once considered the possibility of losing Jenny outside the possibility of Jenny finding out the truth, solely because he had never once considered the possibility of too-good-to-be-true Jenny Calendar falling in love with him.

Buffy, of course, hadn’t picked up on the change between Giles and Jenny, so focused was she on Emily’s murder, and in better circumstances this would make Giles proud of his Slayer’s ability to block out anything besides potential threats. Xander was too busy trying to figure out how to look like he was helping with the talent show (while not really helping at all) to notice anything outside that. But Willow, as always, was frustratingly attuned to Jenny’s moods, and came up to Giles in private after their first round of questioning students who might have been involved in Emily’s demise.

“So, hey, Ms. Calendar seems a little sad lately,” said Willow, sounding determinedly chipper. “And that’s pretty weird, considering how well you guys were getting along a few days ago—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Giles sharply. The memory of Jenny’s pained expression that night in his room stuck with him, and he couldn’t bear the thought of hurting her more. How would that even go? Your statement was nowhere close to premature, I have fallen madly in love with you when I wasn’t expecting it, and there has never been a moment we’ve known each other without my omissions between us. You make me feel happier than I’ve ever been, especially when I’m lying to your face. Being your husband has been a privilege and an honor, even as I treat you like an inconvenience—

“I think you should,” said Willow, her smile fading. “Talk, I mean. Maybe not with me—okay, definitely not with me, I don’t think I can work out marriage stuff—but probably with Ms. Calendar.”

“I still haven’t told her,” said Giles.

Willow blinked, then frowned. “Giles, I think you need to,” she said.

“If I tell her and I lose her—”

“—then that’s her choice to make,” Willow finished. “And it’s better than her finding out some other way, isn’t it? What if she comes into the library and sees you training Buffy? You can bet she’s not gonna be happy. Plus,” she blushed, smiling dreamily, “it’d be kinda nice to have Ms. Calendar hanging around the library more often.”

Giles swallowed. “I quite agree,” he said finally. “But I think it should wait until we’ve found out a bit more about what Morgan Shay might be up to.”

He’d been saying this sort of thing quite a lot since the morgue-drawer kiss. I’ll tell her after the hyena mess clears up. I’ll tell her after I know what’s going on with Angel. I’ll tell her after patrol, after school, after everything is perfect and I know she’ll be safe. At this point, Giles thought, there was little to no chance that he would follow up on it, especially not now—not when telling Jenny had the potential to hurt her even more than he already had.

Everything he did seemed to hurt Jenny, one way or another. Part of him was beginning to think that this marriage should have had an end date stamped on it way back in the beginning, when they were planning the whole thing. But then, even at the beginning, he’d been rather taken with the idea of staying married to Jenny. After what had felt like a lifetime of loneliness, the concept of some sort of companionship had been too much to resist.

Willow gave him a dubious look, but dropped the subject, hurrying out of the office after Xander and Buffy. Giles sat down and took a cup of tea, trying not to think about the fact that Jenny usually stopped by for lunch around this hour.

“I don’t see why I have to follow Brett and his stupid band!” Cordelia was objecting when Giles entered the auditorium.

“Because we have to clear the stage for the finale, Cordy, we’ve been over this,” said Jenny thinly. Giles’s heart caught at the sight of her; she looked terrible. Angry and miserable, clutching a large stack of flyers to her chest, and very obviously unable to handle Cordelia’s complaints. She hadn’t yet noticed Giles, who found himself feeling somehow worse at the sight of her. She’d been long gone when he woke up that morning, and had left for school without him, marking the second day that Giles had woken up alone.

Giles decided to intervene. “Cordelia,” he said, stepping up next to Jenny (she stiffened), and then frowned theatrically, directing his gaze at her hair.

“What?” said Cordelia.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Giles, doing his best to sound embarrassed. “It’s just…your hair?”

Cordelia reeled. “There’s something wrong with my hair?” she gasped. “Oh my god!” Without preamble, she turned, dashing out of the auditorium.

“Xander was right,” said Giles, amused. “Worked like a charm.” He didn’t dare look over at Jenny.

Jenny sighed. “Thanks,” she said quietly.

Giles nodded, eyes still on the empty space where Cordelia had been. “Of course,” he said.

Jenny exhaled. “I didn’t mean to make it weird,” she said. “I don’t usually get this clingy this fast.”

Every single self-deprecating remark of Jenny’s hurt Giles so much more than he had expected. There was no way out of their marriage that didn’t end in disaster for Giles, but he’d thought that he could have at least spared Jenny the heartache. “I—” he began, turning slowly to face Jenny, lost in all the things he wanted to tell her.

“Giles, have you seen Morgan?” Buffy called, a strange, flat note to her voice.

“I’m sorry?” said Giles, turning away from Jenny.

“We can talk later,” said Jenny, and hurried away, pushing past Buffy, Willow, and Xander.

“Is Ms. Calendar okay?” Buffy asked, peering around Giles at the discarded flyers. “Willow says she’s just been handing out worksheets in class.”

“And aren’t we all grateful for that!” said Xander jovially, but his smile flickered as he saw the way Jenny was leaning against the stage. “Hey, Giles, what’s going on?”

Willow looked up at Giles with a pointed expression. “I think you should tell them,” she said.

Buffy and Xander exchanged a bemused look. “Tell us what?” Buffy asked.

“Frankly, Willow, anything going on between myself and Jenny shall remain—” Giles began sharply.

“Normally I’d agree with you, but this is getting ridiculous,” said Willow. She was glaring. Giles hadn’t once seen Willow glare, and certainly not at him. “Giles, Ms. Calendar’s been miserable. She’s been ignoring her lesson plan and giving us worksheets so she can program in a sulk without being interrupted. And you’re keeping a whole big secret from her, and a whole big secret from Buffy and Xander—”

“Because it is none of their business!” snapped Giles. “And frankly, Willow, it isn’t yours either!”

“Well, maybe it should be!” Willow shot back. “You’re hurting her, Giles—”

“Willow.”

Willow froze. Buffy and Xander now looked extremely unnerved. Giles, exhausted, turned to face Jenny, who was looking steadily and tiredly at all of them. “Jenny, I’m sorry,” he said. “The children seem to have picked up on—”

“Yeah, I can see that,” said Jenny. “Willow, don’t harass my husband. He’s right. It isn’t any of your business what’s going on between us, and you should know better than to tell him off for something you don’t completely understand.”

“Ms. Calendar—” Willow began, looking a mixture of horrified and furious.

“Don’t,” said Jenny. She gave Giles a small, sad smile. “Rupert, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s true that I haven’t been handling our personal stuff well, and if it’s starting to affect my work, I think we should probably talk about it. If—that’s okay with you?”

Giles didn’t know how to respond to that. There was a painful lump in his throat. “You’re not at fault, Jenny,” he said. “It’s my own cowardice that’s causing us both all the trouble. But yes. We should talk after school, before the talent show starts.”

Jenny was looking at him a little differently, now. At the word cowardice, her lips had parted, and there was a small spark of hope in her eyes. Giles felt a flutter in his chest; she had become rather adept at reading between the lines, with him, and now seemed no exception. “I love you, you know,” she said, lightly enough that it wasn’t quite clear whether or not she was saying it as his fake wife or as Jenny Calendar.

It was a clear invitation, a way for Giles to respond in kind without the consequences of a true declaration of love. And it made him love her all the more, for trying to help even a complete idiot like himself, but he couldn’t take the coward’s way out. If ever he told Jenny he loved her, it would be without pretense. “I know,” he said quietly, and reached out to her, but she was already turning and hurrying out of the auditorium.

Buffy and Xander exchanged a concerned look. Willow, however, had gone from infuriated to a pained understanding. “Oh,” she said. “Huh.”

“Yes,” said Giles, uncomfortably aware of the fact that Willow was smart enough to piece the mess together. “Well. Buffy, you mentioned wanting to talk to Morgan?”

Buffy seemed rather stuck on the concept of Morgan’s dummy being behind the murders, which Giles severely doubted. Still, every theory merited investigation, and a second day of after-school research seemed apropos. A few quiet hours in the library would also enable Giles to have some sort of a conversation with Jenny while the children looked for more information, which terrified him thoroughly. He would have to tell her the truth about himself, he knew, but he just so didn’t want to. She’d be angry, or worse, hurt, and it would throw yet another complication into an already muddled arrangement.

Arms full of costumes, Giles followed Willow and Buffy into the library, where they found Xander sitting at the desk with Morgan’s odd little dummy.

“Where did you get that?” said Buffy uncomfortably.

“Took it out of Mrs. Jackson’s cupboard,” said Xander nonchalantly. “You said you wanted to speak to Morgan alone, so, well…”

Giles set the costumes down, turning to Willow. “You and I have some hunting of our own to do,” he said. Willow was really the only one he trusted around his books, especially after what Xander had called The Orange Pop Rock Catastrophe and Giles had called a sticky mess on the encyclopedias.

Willow wavered. “Giles,” she said. “Ms. Calendar’s right that it’s not any of my business. But it bothers me that—”

“Willow, I am well aware that I have thoroughly mishandled the situation,” said Giles stiffly. “My primary goal is to hurt Jenny as little as possible, and it’s becoming incredibly difficult to do that right now.”

Willow seemed satisfied with this answer. “Then you’d better tread carefully,” she said, not unkindly, and set her own pile of costumes down, heading up into the stacks.

Buffy, meanwhile, was heading out of the library to find Morgan; as she exited, she held the door open for Jenny, who looked a little taken aback at Willow and Xander’s presence.

“Isn’t that Morgan Shay’s dummy?” Jenny asked warily.

“I’ve found it best to ask as little as possible,” said Giles, trying to smile. It came off as more of a nervous grimace. “Should we—”

“Yeah, okay,” said Jenny, and stepped into Giles’s office, sitting down on his desk.

Giles followed her in, shutting the door. “Jenny,” he began.

Jenny held up a hand. “This isn’t your issue,” she said. “Okay? This is mine. Regardless of how you feel about me, I don’t want Willow Rosenberg jumping down your throat because she thinks you’re a bad husband. And if she’s been noticing my moping around over the last two days, I’d say that’s a pretty reasonable conclusion to make, which is entirely my fault. So before we get going on whatever it is you’re afraid of, I need you to know that I’m sorry.”

“You have absolutely nothing to apologize for,” said Giles immediately.

Jenny fixed him with a fondly exasperated look. “You’re kinda bad at taking apologies,” she said.

“When they’re not needed—” Giles began helplessly.

“I don’t think you’re the one who gets to decide what I’m sorry about.”

“I think, if an apology is directed at me, I am within reasonable grounds to dismiss it as completely unnecessary—” Belatedly, Giles realized how horribly he had put his foot in his mouth.

“And I think calling my apology unnecessary but not telling me why I shouldn’t be apologizing is ridiculous!” snapped a clearly humiliated Jenny.

“Guys!” shouted Xander, barging into the office. “Sid’s gone!”

“What?” said Giles, realized what might have happened, and narrowly resisted the urge to jump atop the desk next to Jenny.

“Sid as in the dummy?” said Jenny slowly. “As in Morgan Shay’s dummy?”

Willow tumbled in after Xander, waving a book in hand. “Guys, listen to this!” she gasped, leaning against the doorframe to catch her breath. “On rare occasions inanimate objects of human quality, such as dolls and mannequins, already mystically possessed of consciousness, have acted upon their desire to become human by harvesting organs.”

“Emily’s heart,” said Giles, nauseated.

“And it’d sure explain where Sid’s gone off to,” Xander added, looking pale.

“You know what?” said Jenny suddenly. “I can’t deal with any of this right now.” She slid off Giles’s desk. “I’m going to go home,” she said to a spot on the wall. “I’m going to go home until I’m needed for the talent show and, and not think about any of this, okay? Okay.”

“Jenny,” said Giles, feeling awful. This was really the worst possible outcome. “We still have to talk—”

“Heard you loud and clear, Rupert,” said Jenny, still not looking at him. “Let me know when I’m necessary again.” She hurried out of the office.

“What is going on with you two?” said Xander, sounding genuinely concerned.

“She knows there’s a creepy dummy running around trying to kill people, right?” Willow added uneasily.

“I need a cup of tea,” said Giles, a lump in his throat.

Buffy arrived with the dummy in tow. Sid then proceeded to tell them a tale the likes of which Giles had never anticipated. A demon hunter, cursed to be a living dummy until all the demons were killed…well, at least Giles’s initial research into demons that needed a heart and a brain to look human was of some use to the situation. Still, it was rather nice to have someone else explaining everything for a change, especially in his state of distraction. He said as such to Sid, who nodded.

“There were seven of them,” Sid informed the room at large. “I’ve killed six. One more and the curse gets lifted. I’m sure it’s someone in that stupid talent show.”

“Yeah, but our demon has his heart and his brain,” Buffy pointed out. “He’ll be moving on.”

“So once we know who’s missing from the show…” Sid began.

“We’ll know who our demon is,” Sid finished.

The show. The phrase clicked in Giles’s head. I’m going to go home until I’m needed for the talent show. “The show!” he said.

“What?” said Buffy.

“I have to go, I-I’m needed there,” Giles stammered, and was about to all but race out of the room when Buffy caught his arm. “What,” he said, his mind already on Jenny.

“Make sure you know who is and isn’t there!” Buffy reminded him.

“Yeah, form the power circle,” Sid chimed in.

“The what?” said Giles weakly.

“The power circle,” said Sid, looking about as close to bemused as a dummy could get. “You get everyone together, get ‘em revved up—”

“Right,” said Giles, shaking off Buffy’s arm and hurrying out of the library.

Backstage, the cast of Sunnydale High’s talent show was buzzing with activity when he entered. “Fifteen minutes to curtain!” Jenny was shouting, a last splotch of paint on her face, and Giles’s heart seized at the sight of her. She blinked, looking at him, and then turned away.

Giles hurried up to her. “Jenny, we need to talk,” he began.

“Save it for after the show,” said Jenny. “I have a whole bunch of equipment to set up.” Without waiting for his answer, she hurried away.

Giles swallowed, hard, and was knocked into by a wide-eyed Cordelia. “I can’t go out there!” she wailed. “All those people staring at me and judging me like I’m some kind of, of, Buffy! What if I mess up?”

“I have no idea,” said Giles. “Frankly, I’m the last person you should ask about something like that right now. Excuse me.” He hurried to center stage, then called, “In five minutes we’ll, we’ll all assemble on the stage for the power, um, thing, all right?”

“Power circle in five!” Jenny shouted.

“Yes,” said Giles. “What she said.” Then he sat down on a nearby bench and tried not to feel too miserable about the whole affair, which didn’t really work.

Somebody sat down next to him. “That was not helpful advice,” Cordelia informed him. “Don’t you have anything else to say?”

“Can’t you ask Jenny?” Giles asked heavily. “She’s a damn sight better at bouncing back than I am, Cordelia.”

“Obviously, because you’re in some kind of loser-librarian downward spiral right now, and that cannot happen when I’m about to go and sing onstage,” huffed Cordelia. “I need sage advice, Giles. Hand some over.”

Giles looked up at her, trying to think of some inane bit of advice that might make her go away. “Um, picture the audience in their underwear,” he said.

“Even Mrs. Franklin?” Cordelia’s face screwed up. “Ew!” But she got up and left, still shuddering.

Giles pulled himself up from the bench as well. Jenny was shepherding students into the power circle, which gave him ample time to observe—

“Oh no, get over here,” said Jenny grimly, grabbing Giles’s hand and pulling him into the circle. “You’re not getting out of this one, Rupert.”

Giles did a rapid head count, then frowned: not a single person was missing. He counted again, but ended up with the same result.

“Okay, just—just—” Jenny waved a hand. “Good luck out there,” she said miserably, and tugged herself free of the power circle, all but running backstage. The students looked somewhat confused, but Marc the Magnificent cocked his head a little and followed her.

Giles decided to let Jenny deal with Marc herself; she certainly wouldn’t take kindly to his help at this juncture. As Buffy landed in front of him, he informed her nervously, “There’s no one missing.”

“So the demon isn’t in the show,” said Buffy.

“All right, well, you warn the others,” said Giles. “I’d best get this show started.”

But as it turned out, there really wasn’t all that much for Giles to do. All the students were already waiting in the wings, Marc the Magnificent had (presumably) set the stage for his performance, and Jenny—wherewas Jenny? Giles wavered, debating whether or not going after her was a good idea—

There was a loud thud from the stage. Giles frowned. Had one of the props gone awry? There was that terrible guillotine of Marc’s that served no clear purpose whatsoever—

Giles was nearly bowled over by Buffy, who registered his presence and skidded to a stunned stop. “What?” she gasped out. “But—you’re Brain Man!”

“I’m sorry?” said Giles, bemused.

Willow reached them next, wheezing. “Not—Giles!” she gasped. “Ms. Calendar!”

Buffy went pale and ran for the stage.

“What on earth—” Giles began.

Xander steadied Willow, looking nauseous. “The demon’s in the show,” he said. “It doesn’t have a healthy brain. We thought it’d go after you—”

It took Giles a moment to fully understand what Xander and Willow were trying to tell him. It took him another moment to realize what the thud must have been. He ran, bursting through the curtains to find Buffy fighting Marc the Magnificent and Jenny—

Jenny was strapped, unconscious, to the guillotine bench, a blade poised to neatly chop off the part of her head containing her brain. Giles had to resist the very strong urge to full-on tackle Marc the Magnificent himself; as it was, he seriously considered it before the rope snapped. He lunged, grabbing it a second before it would have cut off Jenny’s head.

“Cutting it a little close there, Giles,” said Xander, his face pale.

“Pull that blade back up,” said Giles flatly, thrusting the rope into Xander’s hands. As Xander obliged, Giles ran to Jenny, undoing the restraints at her chest and feet. God, she would have died not knowing anything. She would have died knowing absolutely nothing. If he had told her that he wasn’t writing a book, that he was a Watcher, anything of importance, she would never have been put in this position—

In Marc the Magnificent’s haste to kill Jenny, he’d forgotten to lock the head restraint in place. Giles lifted it, pulling Jenny off the bench. Scooping her up in a bridal carry, he staggered back, hitting the curtain and very nearly falling to the stage floor.

The demon had been kicked into the guillotine. This was, of course, when Jenny stirred. “Ow,” she whispered, one hand fluttering to touch the bruise on her forehead. “Ow! Rupert, did Marc punch me out or am I just imagining—”

“I love you,” said Giles, dizzy with relief. “So much.”

Jenny smiled slightly. “Cool,” she mumbled, and turned her face into his chest. 

Giles bid the children a hasty goodbye and informed Snyder that he would be taking Jenny home, claiming a prop malfunction had led to injury and playing up the concerned-husband factor to the best of his abilities (though very little of his concern was feigned). Supporting Jenny, he hurried out to the parking lot, carefully unlocking the car door.

“So, you, like, love me?” said Jenny, who still sounded a little woozy. “Like love me love me?”

“I love you love you,” Giles agreed.

“You know I don’t love you love you yet, right?” Jenny informed him. “I mean I love you, but I don’t know if I love you, because that’s a whole buncha commitment and I’m still not even sure if I’m cool with being married. Even if it’s you and your nice face.”

“You did broach the subject,” Giles reminded Jenny, helping her into the car.

“It was an accident,” said Jenny. “And you’ve been all twitchy ever since, and—and I should still be mad at you for being all twitchy, but right now my head really hurts.” She tilted her head, looking up at him. “You love me?”

The gravity of his words finally hit Giles, jerking him from exhausted relief into something not unlike panic. “I love you,” he said weakly, and the genuine emotion behind his words only intensified his worry.

Jenny gave him a small, crooked smile. “You’re really bad at this,” she said, and tugged at his hand, pulling him down into a clumsy, impassioned hug.

“Yes,” said Giles heavily. “I really, really am.”

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Why I Am Not A Unificationist

I’ve been a Unificationist since childhood. From then, until I was around 19, I had to eat all of the sadomasochism fed by Rev. Moon. My new Father. My new Messiah. I’ll take some time to go through them, but please be patient. I had been told that God was some sort of compulsive crybaby whose universe was forever torn asunder because two naked teenagers had pre-maritial sex in a garden. A step up from the apple and snake, I admit, but the Garden of Eden is still a myth no matter how you spin it.

Anyways, I was also told that human history was a convenient series of failures on behalf of the human race to understand the infinite sorrows of God. The Church painted said God, interestingly enough, as quite impotent. He was a servant to some pseudo-scientific law, called the Divine Principle: a lugubrious, confusing, absurd, and comical attempt to plaster Moon’s idiotic theology onto human history. Neon Genesis Evangelion’s myths made more sense.

I’m not quite sure if the Divine Principle was supposed to be a moral law or not, but I certainly was given that impression. I would be horrified and disgusted if the Principle was by any stretch of the imagination considered moral. This so-called morality dictated that again, because two naked teenagers had pre-marital sex in a garden, the Biblical wars against various tribes, the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Fall of Rome, both World Wars, the Holocaust, the Korean War, and numerous other tragedies, in the Bible and in history, were ordained by the Divine Principle to occur as payment for indemnity, or global karma. The Principle has weird ideas on proportionality. I don’t think that even Zeus, at the height of his maliciousness, would have approved of such a doctrine, so it would be doubly discouraging if a loving and compassionate God did. 

Why then does Moon praise the Principle with such fervor? Even it was true, it should have been condemned and resisted, even if the effort was futile. Of course, there’s always the idea that the Principle is brutally objective, but then, I don’t recall Newton’s Three Laws of Motion or the Pythagorean Theorem bluntly putting persons into sides of God or Satan.

Again, I swallowed this nonsense in my elementary years – I didn’t know any better. I think that I was still watching Power Rangers. So all of this made me very terrified of sex. Moon had a cute obsession with sex. If you don’t believe me, just look up the instructions for the 3-day ceremony. It’s quite revealing. He also said that if a pretty woman attempts to touch your penis, you should kick her 1,000 miles and God will praise you for it, but I’ll touch on his sexism later.

He just could not stop going on about the sexual organs and how they were at the center of the universe, or something like that. Easy enough to pledge abstinence when you’re young, but after puberty, I felt like I was walking in a nightmare. No sex until after I married, and Lord knew when that was going to happen. No choking the chicken, either, but when I did get the occasional slip of the wrist, so-to-speak, my whole being filled with guilt, as if I had committed a crime against God and joined the ranks of Satan.

I realize that abstinence is quite common among many Christians and even Muslims in this country, but at least they are allowed to date! Yes, because God certainly doesn’t want His Children engaging in the evil of DATING. Okay, so women were off limits until I married. At least I got to choose my wife. Oh, what’s that? My wife could be chosen for me? We might barely know each other before getting married? She might not even speak English? There could be a waiting period before having SEX? You know, there’s a word for people who have a peculiar interest in other people’s sex lives, they’re called perverts, and Rev Moon was certainly among them. Lord knows the countless unintentional pregnancies, STI infections, and abortions his teachings may have prevented had he taught instead about the options of masturbation and birth control.

Speaking of sexuality, Rev Moon was diseased with homophobia. I am sorry to say that I caught this disease as well. Moon referred to homosexuals once as dung-eating dogs and homosexuality as an activity that attracts Satan. He also said that those who love dung eating dogs, ergo people who support gay rights, will produce that quality of life. I’ve heard some homophobic statements from Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, but Moon’s hate speech sounds like something you’d hear from Neo-Nazis. Yeah, I went there, but Moon’s words were straight up dehumanizing and condemnable. NO group of people deserve to be described in that fashion. Also, Moon himself said that Hitler and Stalin were reborn as new beings, and they declared him the messiah. So he seems to think quite a bit of their opinions.

In any case, many religions still have trouble with treating homosexuals as equals, and that’s a shame. I repeat, a shame. Moon could have learned a thing from Desmond Tutu. Even the 14th Dalai Lama supports gay marriage and Pope Francis, who does not like homosexuality, says that the Church has no right to interfere with the spiritual lives of gays and that he has no authority to judge gay Catholics. I grew out of homophobia after I grew out of Moon.

Then there’s this whole damned idea of Rev Moon being the Messiah. Hell, anyone can claim that. Just ask Father Divine, Marshall Applewhite, Elijah Muhammad, Jim Jones, or L. Ron Hubbard. We all know the story. Jesus asked Moon to take up the cross and suffer for humanity as the first True Parent. The whole idea being that Jesus was supposed to get married as opposed to being crucified. Now I wouldn’t force crucifixion on my worst enemy, but marriage on the other hand, should be a choice, not a requirement for joining heaven, as Moon teaches. I think that most people are comfortable with the parents that they already have, and don’t need fanatical ones from Korea.

What makes Moon so special that he should be the Messiah, anyways? It’s his word against mine. Surely, Jesus didn’t expect Moon to convince people on word alone. Except that he apparently did. To be honest, I believed that Moon was the Messiah out of pity. He does deserve some. His home country was torn apart before his eyes, and he had to suffer atrocious accommodations in a North Korean prison camp. No one should have to go through that. The pressure was all around me to convert. Certainly I wouldn’t turn against a man who suffered so much. Before I knew it, I was bowing before photographs and reading books I could hardly understand at six in the morning. For those who want a better idea of what I am talking about, check out the film, “Ticket To Heaven.” Moon, however, had a habit of romanticizing Korea as the center of the world. I don’t hate Korea. It’s a fine nation, but not a holy one. Since Moon cast North Korea as Satan and South Korea as God, he probably forgot to mention that “God’s” nation had brutal dictators like Park Chung-hee.

I could also go on about how, in face of separation of church and state, Moon crowned himself like a king in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, how he implored Americans to forgive Nixon who sabotaged the Vietnam Peace Talks in 1968, how he founded the Washington Times which spews climate change denial, and how he had at least one affair while dictating other people’s sex lives, but I think I’ve made my point. Moon is no more of a messiah than my dead goldfish. If you still want a Korean to admire, try Kim Dae-Jung.

In closing, you may wonder what exactly liberated me from my slave-masters? It was a woman named Nansook Hong, whose book I would implore all of you to read. She married Moon’s first son, Hyo Jin, and suffered unspeakable abuse, both mental and physical. When Moon was told of these things, he blamed her for not being a good wife. This is the sexism I was referring to earlier. Moon was more concerned about his magnanimous legacy than about the domestic abuse of his daughter-in-law. As I read her testimony and followed her journey, I found myself going through a similar one. By the last page, I left the church and freed myself from the depressing theology of Rev Moon. I live a happy life now. I’m not very religious, but I don’t hate religion. 

Moon didn’t learn a lot from religion. Many Jewish scholars see the Old Testament stories as metaphors to learn from, not literal historical events representing the Cain and Abel dichotomy. If Moon really understood Jesus, he would have lived more like Gandhi, Tolstoy, or even Shaliene Woodley, as opposed to Donald Trump or John D. Rockefeller. The Qur’an opposes collective punishment for crimes done by others and would be disgusted with ideas like indemnity. While both Buddhism and Hinduism see atheism or agnosticism as acceptable spiritual paths, Buddhism more so. Moon denounced godlessness as Satanic.

I would like to thank HWDYKYM for giving me a healthy space to express these thoughts. As you can see by the length of this, they’ve been bubbling beneath the surface for some time now. I know that I may not have not have gotten everything right as far as Moon’s doctrine is concerned. I simply speak from my own experience – what I was taught, what I had believed. I hold no ill will towards current members, by the way. Many of them are still beloved members of my friends and family, just don’t expect me to go to workshops.

Sun Myung Moon’s theology used to control members

Divine Principle – Parallels of History

Sun Myung Moon  – Restoration through Incest

Moon’s Theology of the Fall, Tamar, Jesus and Mary

Nansook Hong, transcripts of three interviews

Nansook Hong In The Shadow Of The Moons, part 1

[newsnigeria]

Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/and-now-a-word-from-the-jewish-democratic-council-of-america/

And now, a word from the Jewish Democratic Council of America

Friends, Events of the past week demonstrated that words matter. The Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) immediately condemned Representative Ilhan Omar’s tweet for what it was – an anti-Semitic trope. We followed-up with a statement, denouncing Rep. Omar’s tweet because it represented a form of anti-Semitism that has historically been used to target Jews. We expressed deep concern that a member of Congress would express such incendiary views, and asserted that her constituents and the American people deserved better.Within 24 hours, House Democratic leadership, as well as dozens of Democratic members of Congress, condemned Rep. Omar’s statement and expressed similar concerns. Facing immense pressure, Rep. Omar ���unequivocally” apologized for her tweet. JDCA responded by welcoming Rep. Omar’s recognition that her words were offensive and her willingness to learn. We expressed hope that this would be last time she repeats dangerous stereotypes targeting Jews and said we look forward to engaging with her to voice our deep concerns. We also expressed concern that her apology was in fact equivocal because it repeated some of the same references she had originally tweeted about. JDCA is committed to ensuring that all members of Congress understand the gravity of these issues and calling out anti-Semitism wherever we see it.JDCA has spoken out against Rep. Omar and other Democrats with whom we disagree before, and we will continue to speak out against anyone who engages in anti-Semitism irrespective of their party affiliation. Speaking truth to power, even within your own party, is consistent with our values. Words matter. But hypocrisy matters too.   That is why JDCA will continue to call out the hypocrisy of Republicans who are quick to criticize anti-Semitism when it’s politically expedient, but refuse to denounce anti-Semitism in their own ranks and at the highest levels of power.There is no question that insinuations of Jewish money controlling American politics is an anti-Semitic canard. So where was the Republican outrage when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy insinuated just four months ago that Jews were attempting to buy the midterm election? In the last election, Republican state parties and candidates ran attack ads in six states featuring Jews clutching cash. Where was the outrage over the GOP’s widespread use of this anti-Semitic trope? Unfortunately, it wasn’t there. Instead, we have seen Republicans selectively condemn anti-Semitism when it suits their political interests but remain silent when it comes from the highest ranks of power.Republicans were silent as Donald Trump ran a presidential campaign in which he frequently used anti-Semitic tropes. His final campaign ad – which was explicitly condemned by at least five Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) – referred to the same anti-Semitic trope Rep. Omar invoked this week. But that wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last. In 2015, Trump told a crowd of Jews that “you’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money.” More recently, he promoted an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory on Twitter. And we will never forget that the President of the United States publicly created a moral equivalence between neo-Nazis and those protesting them in Charlottesville.Again, where is the Republican outrage? There has been none. Just silence. Republicans have been quick to point to their recent condemnation of Rep. Steve King for his alignment with white supremacy, but as Speaker Nancy Pelosi reminded us on Wednesday, Republicans’ decision to finally take action against King – who has long been known to hold anti-Semitic views – took Republicans 13 years.Even this past week, 177 House Republicans voted against a bill containing language condemning anti-Semitism. All Democrats – including Rep. Omar – voted for it, but Republicans chose party over principle, and nearly all of them voted “no.” JDCA spoke out after this vote, affirming that it was “blatant hypocrisy on the part of Republicans, plain and simple, and we condemn them for it in the strongest possible terms.”This hypocrisy is simply unacceptable.We’ve had enough. Anti-Semitism cannot be tolerated, and we must uniformly hold elected officials to the highest standards. If you are committed to calling out anti-Semitism only when it’s politically expedient, then you are just dedicated to partisanship not principles. That’s why we’re encouraging the GOP to commit to calling out anti-Semitism whenever and wherever it emerges. As JDCA stated on Wednesday in a message to Republicans – “enough of the willful blindness, hypocrisy, and double standards.”Words matter, but hypocrisy matters too, and if you agree with the work JDCA is doing, please consider supporting our efforts today. Please also check out more of JDCA’s work from this past week on our website, including our response to the breaking news of President Trump’s emergency declaration at our border, an op-ed by Executive Director Halie Soifer published in the Times of Israel, and a letter to the editor published in the Jewish Journal by JDCA Board Member Ada Horwich and Halie Soifer.  Shabbat Shalom,Ron Klein Chair, Jewish Democratic Council of AmericaHalie Soifer Executive Director, Jewish Democratic Council of America

[personalfn-blog]

This Diwali - Gift Thoughtfully and Invest Wisely

Diwali, the festival of lights, is around the corner. Celebrations are marked by stunning fireworks, fervour, and fanfare with friends and family across the world. The ebullience on the streets, particularly in India, is so dazzling with lanterns, rangoli, fireworks, and shopping that it just can’t go unnoticed. Essentially, Diwali symbolises the victory of good over evil; light over darkness; hope over despair; and knowledge over ignorance. Conventional gifting options Diwali is incomplete without the exchange of gifts amongst the friends and family members. You may take this day as an opportunity to express their love and gratitude. As rightly said by Lucius Annaeus Seneca (a Stoic Philosopher), “ A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.” So, this Diwali, ensure you give a thoughtful gift to your loved ones; a gift that will touch their hearts and illuminate their life. Here are some other innovative ways to gift your loved ones this Diwali:

Gift a Holiday or a Dinner Parents make numerous sacrifices, so that their children see a bright future and lead a comfortable standard of living. Therefore, when you become a financially independent adult, consciously do your bit to make your parents happy in return. One such way is gifting or funding a holiday to a place they always wanted to travel and explore. The holiday will be memorable and a manifestation of your morals, principles, and respect for your parents. Likewise, you can purchase a dinner package for your loved ones.

Gift Card – a smart choice   This Diwali, if you are unsure of your loved ones’ preferences, a Gift Card could be a smart choice. These are prepaid cards offered by banks and widely accepted today at merchandise outlets and online shopping portals. You can rest easy about the security of the money as it comes with a unique PIN, plus it’s easy to handle as opposed to doling out cash. But remember that gift cards usually have a one year validity from the date of issue, and cash withdrawals aren’t permitted, nor are they reloadable. A gift card provides them with the liberty to buy what they like from a select store.

Aid someone’s Education, Healthcare At times, certain money-oriented yet valuable experiences, such as quality education, a hobby class, exclusive health check-up packages, etc. are priceless. If you can gift these to them, or aid them in any way, it would be a noteworthy gesture; an exceptional act of kindness.

Unconventional gifting – Invest in financial instruments The best gifting option at any given point of time is investing some money in productive assets. Let’s look at various investment avenues available to invest into:

Mutual Funds Investing in productive investment avenues in favour of your loved ones can enhance their financial wellbeing and will be a fulfilling experience for you, the giver. SIP or Systematic Investment Plan in a mutual fund scheme(s) is a promising mode of investing in mutual funds systematically for your loved ones, which can contribute to their long-term financial goals.

Recurring Deposits Similarly, consider a Recurring Deposit (RD) for someone who is risk averse. This will add to his/her financial security, earn a fixed and better rate of return vis-à-vis a savings account. However, make sure you explain to the recipient that although the interest earned on the RD may not be subject to tax deduction at source (TDS), the interest is taxable.

Fixed Deposits A lump sum investment can also be done in a bank Fixed Deposit (also known as term deposit) in the name of the person of your choice. Be wise to select a reputed bank with a solid financial standing before parking money.

Medical Insurance As you know, cost of healthcare is on a rise. And today’s lifestyle invites more risk to one’s financial health. So, if you can gift your loved ones a health insurance cover by paying his/her premium, it would be a valuable gift. Financially independent adults can consider paying the health insurance premiums for their parents. By doing so, especially in the case of dependent parents, entitles you for a tax deduction under Section 80D of the Income-tax Act, 1961.

Go ahead and buy gold Gold has always carried high emotional value, as it is passed on to generations and strengthens bonds. Gold symbolises wealth and holds a religious significance: a mark of Goddess Lakshmi. One such auspicious day to buy gold is Dhanteras or Dhanatrayodashi, which is the first day of Diwali. As per Hindu mythology it is said, on the day of Dhanatrayodashi Goddess Lakshmi came out from the ocean of milk during the churning of the Sea. And, hence,Goddess Lakshmi along with Lord Kuber (known as the treasurer of the world) is worshipped on this day. You can invest as well gift gold in various forms such as:

Physical gold If you are an ardent believer of investing in physical gold, ensure the quality of gold is a hallmarked product. Insist on a hallmark certificate to authenticate the purity of gold you purchase. It will have reference of the year of hallmarking, stamp of Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), carat (24k or 23k or 22k or 18k and so on), and jeweller identification mark.

Gold ETFs Gold ETF is an open-ended exchange traded fund (offered by mutual funds) which tracks the price of gold and each unit represents ownership of gold asset. Gold ETFs can be purchased on the stock exchanges (demat and share trading account is a must). When you buy a gold ETF, you get a contract indicating your ownership in gold equivalent to the rupee amount of your investment. Each unit of gold in the fund that you can buy is equal to 1 gram of gold (some mutual fund houses also offer 1 unit at 0.5 gram of gold). However, the gold is held on your behalf by an appointed custodian for the ETF. You never get to see or receive delivery of the gold you own; but in times of needs the units can be used as collaterals for loans.

Gold saving funds These are fund of fund schemes (offered by mutual funds) which invest their corpus into an underlying Gold ETF. They benchmark their performance against the prices of physical gold, and attempt to provide returns that closely correspond to the returns of its underlying Gold ETF. And unlike gold ETFs, to purchase gold funds a demat account is not necessary; the units allotted reflect in the mutual fund account statement. Compared to gold ETFs, the expense ratio of a gold savings fund is slightly high, but over the long-term the returns can prove rewarding. You can invest the lump sum, through SIPs or whichever way is convenient to you. Having said that, SIPs enable regular disciplined investing plus rupee-cost averaging while you endeavour to compound your wealth.  Like gold ETFs, investing in gold saving funds is a smart option with merits –– convenience, low holding cost, no issue on quality, no premiums to be paid on purchase, and no compromise on resale value.

Sovereign Gold Bonds (SGBs) SGBs are Government securities denominated in grams of gold (1 gram and in multiples thereof) and come with tenure of 8 years with an exit option at the end of 5th, 6th and 7th year. You can approach the concerned bank/Post Office/agent 30 days before the coupon payment date. Please note, a request for premature redemption can only be entertained if you, the investor, approach the concerned bank/post office at least 1 day prior to the coupon payment date. The redemption will happen at the prevailing market price then, and for individuals capital gain tax is exempt. The bonds are issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on behalf of the Government at the issue price, and are tradable on stock exchanges – both BSE and NSE. You also have the option to gift these bonds to your near and dear ones by following legit procedures. Currently, there is a discount for purchasing through digital mode: you pay Rs 50 per gram less. Further, SBS are exempt from GST. The application form for SBGs is available with issuing banks and with designated Post Offices/agents. Even simpler, you can even download it from the RBI website. You need to comply with the Know-Your-Customer norms to invest, and the minimum investment allowed is 2 grams, while the maximum buying limit is 500 grams per person per fiscal year, i.e. April to March. During the holding period, you earn interest @2.50% p.a. (fixed rate) payable every 6 months. SGBs can be held in demat and paper form. SGB can also be used as collateral in time of need.

To sum-up... After you’ve read this article, it’s possible that you may take a pledge to spend your money wisely this festive season to create wealth and give the best to our family, so don’t procrastinate –– start now! Also, don’t get married to your investments. Track and review your investment portfolio at least once in 6 months to take corrective measures. It need not be done every day or every week if you have adopted enough prudence while investing.  With regular monitoring and review of your portfolio, you can timely know if and where you are going wrong, and when a call to action is warranted. You can employ timely corrective measures, so that your investments are well-aligned to accomplish the envisioned financial goals. If you’re looking at comprehensive mutual fund portfolio service we strongly suggest you subscribe to FundSelect Plus and benefit from the SEVEN time-tested, readymade equity and debt mutual fund portfolios. Based on your risk profile and investment horizon, you can choose out of three equity portfolios and three debt portfolios. In addition, you get a readymade tax-saving portfolio as well. Don’t miss out on exclusive discounts available and Subscribe Now!

[catholicwatertown]

Pope Francis: speech to World Congress on Child Dignity in Digital World

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis addressed the participants in the World Congress on Child Dignity in the Digital World. Hosted by the Pontifical Gregorian University and its Centre for Child Protection, the four-day event brought together different government and police representatives, software companies, religious leaders and medical experts specialized in the impact of on-line abuse. Below, please find the full text of Pope Francis' prepared remarks, in their official English translation. 

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Your Eminences, President of the Senate, Madame Minister, Your Excellencies, Father Rector, Distinguished Ambassadors and Civil Authorities, Dear Professors, Ladies and Gentlemen,

         I thank the Rector of the Gregorian University, Father Nuno da Silva Gonçalves, and the young lady representative of the youth for their kind and informative words of introduction to our meeting.  I am grateful to all of you for being here this morning and informing me of the results of your work.  Above all, I thank you for sharing your concerns and your commitment to confront together, for the sake of young people worldwide, a grave new problem felt in our time.  A problem that had not yet been studied and discussed by a broad spectrum of experts from various fields and areas of responsibility as you have done in these days: the problem of the effective protection of the dignity of minors in the digital world.

         The acknowledgment and defense of the dignity of the human person is the origin and basis of every right social and political order, and the Church has recognized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) as “a true milestone on the path of moral progress of humanity” (cf. JOHN PAUL II, Addresses to the United Nations Organization, 1979 and 1995).  So too, in the knowledge that children are among those most in need of care and protection, the Holy See received the Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1959) and adhered to the relative Convention (1990) and its two optional protocols (2001).  The dignity and rights of children must be protected by legal systems as priceless goods for the entire human family (cf. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Nos. 244-245).

         While completely and firmly agreed on these principles, we must work together on their basis.  We need to do this decisively and with genuine passion, considering with tender affection all those children who come into this world every day and in every place.  They need our respect, but also our care and affection, so that they can grow and achieve all their rich potential.

         Scripture tells us that man and woman are created by God in his own image.  Could any more forceful statement be made about our human dignity?  The Gospel speaks to us of the affection with which Jesus welcomes children; he takes them in his arms and blesses them (cf. Mk 10:16), because “it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs” (Mt 19:14).  Jesus’ harshest words are reserved for those who give scandal to the little ones: “It were better for them to have a great millstone fastened around their neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Mt 18:6).  It follows that we must work to protect the dignity of minors, gently yet firmly, opposing with all our might the throwaway culture nowadays that is everywhere apparent, to the detriment especially of the weak and the most vulnerable, such as minors.

         We are living in a new world that, when we were young, we could hardly have imagined.  We define it by two simple words as a “digital world”, but it is the fruit of extraordinary achievements of science and technology.  In a few decades, it has changed the way we live and communicate.  Even now, it is in some sense changing our very way of thinking and of being, and profoundly influencing the perception of our possibilities and our identity.

         If, on the one hand, we are filled with real wonder and admiration at the new and impressive horizons opening up before us, on the other, we can sense a certain concern and even apprehension when we consider how quickly this development has taken place, the new and unforeseen problems it sets before us, and the negative consequences it entails.  Those consequences are seldom willed, and yet are quite real.  We rightly wonder if we are capable of guiding the processes we ourselves have set in motion, whether they might be escaping our grasp, and whether we are doing enough to keep them in check.

         This is the great existential question facing humanity today, in light of a global crisis at once environmental, social, economic, political, moral and spiritual.

         As representatives of various scientific disciplines and the fields of digital communications, law and political life, you have come together precisely because you realize the gravity of these challenges linked to scientific and technical progress.  With great foresight, you have concentrated on what is probably the most crucial challenge for the future of the human family: the protection of young people’s dignity, their healthy development, their joy and their hope.

         We know that minors are presently more than a quarter of the over 3 billion users of the internet; this means that over 800 million minors are navigating the internet. We know that within two years, in India alone, over 500 million persons will have access to the internet, and that half of these will be minors.  What do they find on the net?  And how are they regarded by those who exercise various kinds of influence over the net?

         We have to keep our eyes open and not hide from an unpleasant truth that we would rather not see.  For that matter, surely we have realized sufficiently in recent years that concealing the reality of sexual abuse is a grave error and the source of many other evils?  So let us face reality, as you have done in these days.  We encounter extremely troubling things on the net, including the spread of ever more extreme pornography, since habitual use raises the threshold of stimulation; the increasing phenomenon of sexting between young men and women who use the social media; and the growth of online bullying, a true form of moral and physical attack on the dignity of other young people.  To this can be added sextortion; the solicitation of minors for sexual purposes, now widely reported in the news; to say nothing of the grave and appalling crimes of online trafficking in persons, prostitution, and even the commissioning and live viewing of acts of rape and violence against minors in other parts of the world.  The net has its dark side (the “dark net”), where evil finds ever new, effective and pervasive ways to act and to expand.  The spread of printed pornography in the past was a relatively small phenomenon compared to the proliferation of pornography on the net.  You have addressed this clearly, based on solid research and documentation, and for this we are grateful.

         Faced with these facts, we are naturally alarmed.  But, regrettably, we also remain bewildered.  As you know well, and are teaching us, what is distinctive about the net is precisely that it is worldwide; it covers the planet, breaking down every barrier, becoming ever more pervasive, reaching everywhere and to every kind of user, including children, due to mobile devices that are becoming smaller and easier to use.  As a result, today no one in the world, or any single national authority, feels capable of monitoring and adequately controlling the extent and the growth of these phenomena, themselves interconnected and linked to other grave problems associated with the net, such as illicit trafficking, economic and financial crimes, and international terrorism.  From an educational standpoint too, we feel bewildered, because the speed of its growth has left the older generation on the sidelines, rendering extremely difficult, if not impossible, intergenerational dialogue and a serene transmission of rules and wisdom acquired by years of life and experience.

         But we must not let ourselves be overcome by fear, which is always a poor counsellor.  Nor let ourselves be paralyzed by the sense of powerlessness that overwhelms us before the difficulty of the task before us.  Rather, we are called to join forces, realizing that we need one another in order to seek and find the right means and approaches needed for effective responses.  We must be confident that “we can broaden our vision.  We have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology; we can put it at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral” (Laudato Si’, 112).

         For such a mobilization to be effective, I encourage you to oppose firmly certain potentially mistaken approaches.  I will limit myself to indicating three of these.

         The first is to underestimate the harm done to minors by these phenomena.  The difficulty of countering them can lead us to be tempted to say: “Really, the situation is not so bad as all that…”   But the progress of neurobiology, psychology and psychiatry have brought to light the profound impact of violent and sexual images on the impressionable minds of children, the psychological problems that emerge as they grow older, the dependent behaviours and situations, and genuine enslavement that result from a steady diet of provocative or violent images.  These problems will surely have a serious and life-long effect on today’s children.

         Here I would add an observation.  We rightly insist on the gravity of these problems for minors.  But we can also underestimate or overlook the extent that they are also problems for adults.  Determining the age of minority and majority is important for legal systems, but it is insufficient for dealing with other issues.  The spread of ever more extreme pornography and other improper uses of the net not only causes disorders, dependencies and grave harm among adults, but also has a real impact on the way we view love and relations between the sexes.  We would be seriously deluding ourselves were we to think that a society where an abnormal consumption of internet sex is rampant among adults could be capable of effectively protecting minors.

         The second mistaken approach would be to think that automatic technical solutions, filters devised by ever more refined algorithms in order to identify and block the spread of abusive and harmful images, are sufficient to deal with these problems.  Certainly, such measures are necessary. Certainly, businesses that provide millions of people with social media and increasingly powerful, speedy and pervasive software should invest in this area a fair portion of their great profits.  But there is also an urgent need, as part of the process of technological growth itself, for all those involved to acknowledge and address the ethical concerns that this growth raises, in all its breadth and its various consequences.

         Here we find ourselves having to reckon with a third potentially mistaken approach, which consists in an ideological and mythical vision of the net as a realm of unlimited freedom. Quite rightly, your meeting includes representatives of lawmakers and law enforcement agencies whose task is to provide for and to protect the common good and the good of individual persons.  The net has opened a vast new forum for free expression and the exchange of ideas and information.  This is certainly beneficial, but, as we have seen, it has also offered new means for engaging in heinous illicit activities, and, in the area with which we are concerned, for the abuse of minors and offences against their dignity, for the corruption of their minds and violence against their bodies.  This has nothing to do with the exercise of freedom; it has to do with crimes that need to be fought with intelligence and determination, through a broader cooperation among governments and law enforcement agencies on the global level, even as the net itself is now global.

         You have been discussing all these matters and, in the “Declaration” you presented me, you have pointed out a variety of different ways to promote concrete cooperation among all concerned parties working to combat the great challenge of defending the dignity of minors in the digital world.  I firmly and enthusiastically support the commitments that you have undertaken.

         These include raising awareness of the gravity of the problems, enacting suitable legislation, overseeing developments in technology, identifying victims and prosecuting those guilty of crimes.  They include assisting minors who have been affected and providing for their rehabilitation, assisting educators and families, and finding creative ways of training young people in the proper use of the internet in ways healthy for themselves and for other minors.  They also include fostering greater sensitivity and providing moral formation, as well as continuing scientific research in all the fields associated with this challenge.

         Very appropriately, you have expressed the hope that religious leaders and communities of believers can also share in this common effort, drawing on their experience, their authority and their resources for education and for moral and spiritual formation.  In effect, only the light and the strength that come from God can enable us to face these new challenges.  As for the Catholic Church, I would assure you of her commitment and her readiness to help.  As all of us know, in recent years the Church has come to acknowledge her own failures in providing for the protection of children: extremely grave facts have come to light, for which we have to accept our responsibility before God, before the victims and before public opinion.  For this very reason, as a result of these painful experiences and the skills gained in the process of conversion and purification, the Church today feels especially bound to work strenuously and with foresight for the protection of minors and their dignity, not only within her own ranks, but in society as a whole and throughout the world.  She does not attempt to do this alone – for that is clearly not enough – but by offering her own effective and ready cooperation to all those individuals and groups in society that are committed to the same end.  In this sense, the Church adheres to the goal of putting an end to “the abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children” set by the United Nations in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Target 16.2).

         On many occasions, and in many different countries, I gaze into the eyes of children, poor and rich, healthy and ill, joyful and suffering.  To see children looking us in the eye is an experience we have all had.  It touches our hearts and requires us to examine our consciences.  What are we doing to ensure that those children can continue smiling at us, with clear eyes and faces filled with trust and hope?  What are we doing to make sure that they are not robbed of this light, to ensure that those eyes will not be not darkened and corrupted by what they will find on the internet, which will soon be so integral and important a part of their daily lives?

         Let us work together, then, so that we will always have the right, the courage and the joy to be able to look into the eyes of the children of our world.

(from Vatican Radio) from News.va http://ift.tt/2y4Jl7g via IFTTT from Blogger http://ift.tt/2xZvdK9

[murteza]

Muslims & Interfaith Responses to Executive Order Banning Refugees and Immigrants

The All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) calls for compassion and urges continuing acceptance of peaceful Syrian refugees and peaceful immigrants from all countries. We all support our national security and we also want to prevent anyone from harming our nation. We appreciate the statements and actions of National Christian and Jewish groups including: Shoulder to Shoulder Interfaith Campaign, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration, Catholic Relief Services, Church World Service, Jewish Community Relations Council( JCRC) of Greater Washington, Interfaith Alliance, Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, Alliance of Baptists, Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, National Council of Churches, New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, Presbyterian Church (USA), Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Sojourners, T'ruah (The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights), National Council of Jewish Women , Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Interfaith Immigration Coalition, and more.   We also support and urge all our congregation members to the following: ACTION ALERT:PLEASE CALL THE WHITE HOUSE AND CONGRESS TODAY!

President Trump: (866) 961-4293

Your Senators and Representatives: (202) 224-3121* *Please call this line 3 times to be connected with your 1 Representative and 2 Senators

Along with our fellow Americans, we are heartbroken by the Syrian Refugee Crisis which affects both Muslims and Christians, who are fleeing ISIS violent extremism and the unimaginable brutality of a despotic dictatorship. 

We wholeheartedly condemn terrorism and violent extremism, and have partnered with the FBI, DHS and all Law Enforcement in protecting our country for the past 15 years.  We will continue to help in national security.  

This Executive Order is simply unnecessary.  We  agree with CNN's national security analyst, Peter Bergen, Vice President at New America and a professor at Arizona State University, that "there is no evidence of terrorists among Syrian refugees to the United States". 

America's refugee vetting process is very detailed and requires almost 24 months of vetting and processing. Over the past four decades the United States has processed more than three million refugees, who are the single most scrutinized and vetted travelers to our nation, each undergoing more than seven security intelligence Agency checks, including biometric tests, medical screenings and in-person interviews with Department of Homeland Security officials.

This is far more detailed and secure than the screening of any European tourists visiting America.  We note that most of the alleged Paris attackers were European citizens born in France or Belgium, whose French or Belgian passport would not need screening or a visa; by contrast, any Syrian refugee must pass multiple careful tests to enter the USA.We therefore pray that these most vulnerable refugees, including women, children, elderly and families are helped as they continue to be appropriately examined and confirmed.  We urge that Muslims, Christians and people of all faiths and backgrounds from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen be allowed into the USA through the refugee process. We also agree that security enhancements should be enacted as needed to vet refugees more carefully.

ISIS does not want refugees to leave Syria and find a better life in America. Those refugees who successfully come to countries like America will send powerful messages that in fact completely demolish ISIS' claims of a clash with the West, and strengthen our fight against extremism.    

We should never forsake our cherished American ideals, but rather help Syrian and all refugees with America's world renowned compassion.  By working together, the International community can end the Syrian conflict peacefully so the nearly 5 million Syrian refugees can return to rebuild their homes and their nation.We are therefore would like to highlight the following Christian, Jewish and Interfaith statements and action alerts: 

1.  Shoulder to Shoulder Interfaith Campaign - Catherine Orsborn, Executive Director:  http://www.shouldertoshouldercampaign.org/In my own upbringing in an evangelical Christian community, I learned early on that loving my neighbor (as well as my enemy), and seeking to come alongside "the least of these" were core to live out the message of Jesus in the world.  (As) a student of the history of religious and racial prejudice in our nation, I am convinced the patriotic and Christian response is to stand alongside refugees fleeing unimaginable conditions to find safety, rest, and opportunity on these shores. To ban any person based on their religious identity flies in the face of America's promise of religious and racial equality. Not only is it immoral, but it does nothing to make us more safe. People of faith and moral conviction should take every step to oppose this action. 

2.  Interfaith Immigration Coalition Action Alert http://www.interfaithimmigration.org/supportrefugees/

3.  U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration  http://www.usccb.org/news/2017/17-026.cfm:We strongly disagree with the Executive Order's halting refugee admissions. We believe that now more than ever, welcoming newcomers and refugees is an act of love and hope. We will continue to engage the new administration, as we have all administrations for the duration of the current refugee program, now almost forty years. We will work vigorously to ensure that refugees are humanely welcomed in collaboration with Catholic Charities without sacrificing our security or our core values as Americans, and to ensure that families may be reunified with their loved ones.

4.  Catholic Relief Services http://www.crs.org/media-center/news-release/head-of-crs-reacts -Our elected officials have an obligation to protect the security of the American people, and take concerns about security seriously. But denying entry to people desperate enough to leave their homes, cross oceans in tiny boats, and abandon all their worldly possessions just to find safety will not make our nation safer. The United States is already using a thorough vetting process for refugees-especially for those from Syria and surrounding countries.  CRS welcomes measures that will make our country safer, but it shouldn't jeopardize the safety of those fleeing violence, nor add appreciable delay nor entail unjust discrimination. As Pope Francis has said: "Fear...weakens and destabilizes us, destroys our psychological and spiritual defenses, numbs us to the suffering of others." We have a moral obligation to 'welcome the stranger'. Our faith compels us to do so.

5.  Church World Service - Rev. John L. McCullough, President/CEO:Church World Service is staunchly opposed and gravely disheartened by this callous, discriminatory decision, which turns our backs on refugees when they are most in need of safety. Make no mistake-by restricting access to resettlement for Syrians, President Trump is manifesting the "Muslim ban" that he threatened on the campaign trail. My heart is heavy for Syrian refugees who believed our promise to them; for their family members who are here and desperately waiting to be reunited with their sister, brother, parent or child; and for the very soul of this nation.

6.  Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Greater Washington:President Donald Trump's order to restrict many tens of thousands of helpless refugees from seeking safety in America, and also barring visas from being issued to anyone from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, betrays the Jewish and American values we cherish. This shouldn't be a partisan or political issue; welcoming refugees is part of what has truly made America great. Our nation has a centuries-long tradition of opening its shores to the oppressed. The Torah teaches, 'You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.' Our history as Jews, and of repeatedly fleeing persecution, makes us sensitive to and compassionate for those who suffer similar fates and experiences and we believe that refugees should be treated with compassion and dignity. The Jewish community must make our voice heard and stand up for our values.

7.  Interfaith Alliance - Rabbi Jack Moline, President of Interfaith Alliance:http://interfaithalliance.org/trump-ban-refugees-international-holocaust-remembrance-day/ Our country has always welcomed those fleeing persecution and violence; it is, in fact, the story of how we came to be. We must stand up to those peddling xenophobia. We must choose wisdom over hateful rhetoric. Our elected leaders must live up to the mandate inherited from our ancestors, starting with President Washington who celebrated that our United States offered "to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.

8.  Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty - Amanda Tyler, Executive Director:Any attempt to ban Muslim refugees based on their religion betrays our values and sends the un-American message that there are second-class faiths. Our country, founded by immigrants who established religious freedom as a bedrock principle, is better than this. A threat to anyone's religious liberty is a threat to everyone's religious liberty, and we as Baptists stand with those facing religious persecution around the world, regardless of their faith.

9.  Alliance of Baptists - Rev. Paula Clayton Dempsey, Director of Partnership Relations:The plight of the displaced is well-documented with the influx of refugees evident along borders, or in small, vulnerable boats dangerously crossing the Mediterranean Sea, or in the overflowing camps in host countries providing emergency relief. More than fifty percent of the refugees are children, many of them orphaned and/or dealing with the loss of family members through the nightmares of trauma and violence they've experienced. The Alliance of Baptists joins the international call for justice and mercy for such vulnerable people. Our faithful actions of advocacy for the rights of refugees is rooted in our concern for all human beings and the protection of the resident alien in biblical justice and Jesus' call of righteous acts of compassion to those in need.

10.  Episcopal Church - Presiding Bishop Michael Curry:The National Cathedral (an Episcopal Church) recently hosted President Trump, and implored him to keep the refugee program intact.  Refugee resettlement is a form of ministry, and one that we, and many other churches and faith-based organizations, cherish. The work of Episcopal Migration Ministries is God's work, and we show the face of God through the care and compassion in that work. I ask President Trump to continue the powerful work of our refugee resettlement program without interruption, recognizing the long wait and screening process that means refugees wait months and sometimes years to enter the country. We ask that we continue to accept as many refugees as we have in the past, recognizing the need is greater than ever. We ask that refugees from all countries receive consideration to come to the U.S. and not to ban those who come from countries most in need of our assistance. Our Book of Common Prayer asks for God to "look with compassion on the whole human family;" to "break down the walls that separate us and unite us in bonds of love." On Saturday, we prayed for God our Father to look with compassion upon the widowed and orphans, outcasts and refugees, prisoners, and all who are in danger. We pray to love one another as God loves us. I echo that prayer now and ask that we may work together to build a more grace and compassion-filled world.

11.  Evangelical Lutheran Church in America - Elizabeth Eaton, Presiding Bishop:Temporarily banning vulnerable refugees does not guarantee our security nor reflect our values as Christians. Refugees being resettled in the United States have fled persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, political views or association with a particular group. They have waited well over a year to successfully complete security screenings by multiple intelligence agencies while living in a completely foreign culture, many times, still facing danger. As Lutherans, many of our ancestors faced the pain of having to flee our homes and the joy of being welcomed in new communities across the United States. As we have done throughout history, I urge our elected officials to honor our biblical witness as well as the best of our nation's traditions of refuge and stand firmly against any policies that result in scaling back the refugee resettlement program.

12.  National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA - Jim Winkler, President and General Secretary:By effectively preventing the entrance of refugees into this country, President Trump is establishing a policy would have kept Joseph, Mary, and Jesus from entering our nation. We ask President Trump to repent and show kindness to the stranger and the refugee that is central to Christian and American values.

13.  New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good - Rev. Dr. Richard Cizik, President:Let me clearly state what should be obvious: American political history, the moral principles of Christian faith, and the enormous contributions made by immigrants to America combine to make refugee admissions-even from war-torn Syria-a good and compassionate thing to do. However, to expand the boundaries of our inclusion will require a greater degree of political vision, compassion, and bold determination. We who are the "new evangelicals" will oppose violations of these principles by President Trump with equal determination.

14.  General Assembly of Presbyterian Church (USA) - Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, the Stated Clerk:Presbyterians, professing a faith in Jesus who entered this world a refugee, have supported refugee resettlement since World War II. Many of our congregations are led by and comprised of former refugees and many more have been transformed by the new friends they have encountered when assisting in resettlement. We are in the midst of a worldwide refugee crisis. Repressing mercy and compassion, in times like these, with groundless limits placed on the faith and nationality of those we should welcome, will not make our nation safer. It will only serve to harm hundreds of thousands of people who are waiting desperately for a safe home and will drive rifts between us and our global neighbors. Our nation is better than this and our congregations stand ready to welcome refugees of all faiths and nations.

15.  Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism - Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, Director:The expected executive order defies the best American tradition of being a place of refuge for those fleeing persecution. As Jews, we recognize the danger in any action that singles out people based on their religious beliefs. If the order is issued as anticipated, it is deeply troubling, rooted in exclusion and discrimination, and echoes the most shameful parts of our history. Facing the largest refugee crisis in recent history, the United States must remain a beacon of safe haven and welcome. Jewish tradition teaches "and each shall sit under their vine and fig tree, and none shall make them afraid" (Micah 4:4). Ensuring our security and fulfilling our highest aspirations as a nation rooted in compassion and committed to religious freedom are not mutually exclusive. Policies such as those promulgated by President Trump in this expected executive order unjustly and falsely create the impression that all Muslims pose a security threat. Attacks on one faith are attacks on all faiths, and we stand with our Muslim friends and allies in rejecting such egregious suggestions.We call on President Trump to refrain from issuing this executive order, on Congress to ensure robust refugee resettlement, and call on all Americans to protect the fundamental principle of religious freedom upon which our country was founded.

16.  Sojourners (Christian social justice advocacy organization) - Jim Wallis, President and Founder:U.S. citizens, immigrants and refugees who practice their Islamic faith in this country-our friends and neighbors-are our brothers and sisters as fellow human beings and children of God. We will never accept a religious test for entry into the United States. As Jesus taught us in Matthew 25, our Christian faith should compel us to act-to advocate for welcoming refugees of all faiths into our country instead of turning them away. Religious tests, in addition to being morally repugnant, would threaten our nation's democratic principles and the constitutional rights of every American. The violation of the religious freedom of our Muslim brothers and sisters must be not be accepted by any people of faith.

17.  T'ruah (The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights) - Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Executive Director:The Torah teaches thirty-six times that the Jewish experience of being strangers in Egypt and fleeing to freedom compels us to care for the stranger in our own midst. The Jewish community knows too well the dangers facing refugees fleeing war and violence, as too many of our own families died because the US borders were virtually closed to Jewish refugees during the Nazi regime. T'ruah joins with the more than 1500 rabbis who have signed the HIAS rabbinic letter welcoming refugees in calling on our elected officials to keep America's doors open and to maintain our historic and moral commitment to serving as a lifeline to those fleeing persecution and violence.

18.  National Council of Jewish Women - Nancy K. Kaufman, CEO:NCJW opposes any actions to reduce refugee resettlement, including measures that would discriminate based on religion or nation of origin. As Jews we are taught va'ahavtem et ha-ger -as we were once strangers, so must we love the stranger. We must rise above prejudice and fear to open our communities to the individuals and families who seek sanctuary in the United States.

19.  Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) - Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins, General Minister and President:We are guided by our faith in the commandments to love God and love our neighbors, whoever they may be. We cannot separate the two, and seek to be welcoming of all people because loving God means loving our fellow human being. We pray that our country reflects principles of both welcome and of religious freedom, and that we remember the value of diversity. As refugees flee conflict, may we seek to offer them compassion, and not turn them away for any reason, including their religious identity.

* Source of Statements and More Statements here https://thinkprogress.org/faith-groups-country-immigrants-muslim-b22798233c90#.n9qig5fff6