I woke up this Maundy Thursday to breaking news from Kenya. Al-Shabaab "militants" have stormed Garissa University, killed at least 15 Christian students, wounded another 60, and taken more as hostages. [UPDATE: More than 70 dead.] [UPPERDATE: Just shy of 150 dead.]
Meanwhile, there's no pizza for Last Supper. Memories Pizza of Walkerton, Indiana has been forced to close following death threats received after its owners announced that they would not be catering gay weddings:
"We're in hiding basically," says co-owner Crystal O'Connor.
In Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, Christians are killed for their beliefs. In America, they're not (yet) being killed, just having their businesses destroyed. Be grateful for small mercies. But in both west and east the dominant ideology is not minded to brook dissent. Islam sells itself as a stern enforcer, and always has done. By contrast, the New Diversity enforcers intolerantly demand uniformity in the name of tolerance and diversity. In the audacity of their assault, they seek to undermine even the possibility of dissent: when words are conscripted to mean their precise opposite, how can you even mount a contrary argument?
~Eric Eckert writes:
Mark,
Judge Napolitano on Fox News thinks the Supreme Court will rule against the religious freedom law in Indiana, because it is discrimination. Shepard Smith is also upset with this law. If these people want to see real discrimination, that is ignored by judges, and politicians, just go to Dearborn, Michigan.I would like to see Smith, Napolitano, and the Supreme Court all wear a t-shirt with a crucifix on it, and attend some festival in this town. Maybe they could set up a gay pride booth at this festival, and hand out gay literature. If any of them attempted to do such a thing, they would need several marine divisions with them, it would be like taking Tikrit or Mosul back.
You can bet that Islamic discrimination will be totally ignored by all the gutless judges, news people, lawyers, and Democrat politicians. Women are not allowed in certain Islamic coffee shops, and certain Islamic restaurants in this country right now, the discrimination is occurring in Islamic neighborhoods, and our courts allow Islamic religious freedom to discriminate against women, go figure. A black guy on YouTube said he is not allowed in Dearborn, and a Muslim said that the black guy is from the crim- filled city of Detroit, and that Dearborn has very little crime. Just let a white Christian say the same thing, and see if this is called discrimination, and racism.
Betrothed gays looking for wedding cakes and floral arrangements are not just carelessly stumbling into homophobic bakeries and florists. It's an organized campaign consciously targeting particular establishments. That's why no gay couples have wandered into a Muslim patisserie in Dearborn. As I said on The John Oakley Show, it's not about expanding "rights", it's about shifts in power - which is to say shifts in fashion. In Kenya and Indiana, the thugs know they can get away with targeting Christians and the world won't care - I mean, how often do you ever hear any of the timeserving hacks and panderers who head up America's "mainstream" churches ever say anything on either subject?
But the Big Gay enforcers know it would all get more complicated if they were to go after a Muslim pizzeria in Dearborn. And, if they did, they'd be the ones in hiding. Tim Cook, the Apple CEO who'll have no truck with hoosier homophobes, is happy to enrich Iran's mullahs so they can build fancier gay gallows on which to hang the sodomites. Muscle respects muscle.
Big Gay is on the ascendant in America. But in an Islamifying Amsterdam, once "the most tolerant city in Europe", gay-bashing is on the rise, and the gay moment is already passing.
~The aforementioned Judge Napolitano's argument is that the Supreme Court will strike down Indiana's law because of the 1964 Civil Rights Act's definition of "public accommodation". He's probably right about that. I'm less impressed by the First Amendment than I used to be, if only because I'm currently wasting half-a-decade of my life and a seven-figure sum in the DC courts to determine whether my 270-word blog post is permitted under said First Amendment. But there's not much point to freedom of speech if you don't have freedom of association. That's to say, it's not much consolation being able to say what you like if you can't use what you say to inform how you live - if you can talk the talk, but you can't walk the walk.
What we're seeing is a campaign to enforce ideological discipline and conformity in every area of daily life. Notwithstanding the LGBTQWERTY lobby's industrial promotion of ever more abstruse and reductive identity politics, such a society will be the very opposite of "tolerant" and "diverse" - and deeply unhappy.
~I see Katherine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, has said that we climate deniers are "sinful". Who knew the Episcopal Church still had sins? Presumably climate denialism is the exception that proves the rule.
At any rate, the Twitter mutaween, acting either on the Episcopal edict or on the usual abuse of the complaints procedure by the Big Climate mullahs, have now shut down yet another climate dissident - the great Tom Nelson, whose perceptive observations and tireless research I have often reTweeted. As Joanne Nova recommends, contact @support and @twitter and let them know how you feel about their serving as blasphemy cops for climate apostasy.
Jo, by the way, is one of the authors I'm proud to appear beside in the new book Climate Change: The Facts. It's available in eBook format from Amazon and all the usual outlets. But you can also order it in paperback direct from SteynOnline - and I'll be happy to autograph it for you or any tedious warm-mongering loved one who might benefit from an alternative point of view.
And as we see, from Kenya to Indiana to Twitter, the "alternative point of view" is a far more endangered species than the polar bear.
~Hope you'll join me on the radio today with Hugh Hewitt, live coast to coast at 6pm Eastern/3pm Pacific.