Wednesday, April 30, 2014

The Return of the Shower-Nuts

In 2008, the shower-nuts of Montgomery County tried to tell people that if they weren't allowed to discriminate against transgender people, perverted predatory men would lurk and leer in women's shower-rooms and bathrooms. All they'd have to do is say, I feel like a female gender identity today, and there's nothing you can do. It will be horrible. They had a petition, trying to get a referendum on the ballot to recall the law, but so many of the names were forged and invalid that they could not get the issue voted on. They called it "the bathroom bill," and pretended that the issue was the safety of women and children, and not bigotry.

This is 2014. Montgomery County has had a gender-identity nondiscrimination law for six years. No lurking, leering men have turned up in any ladies' rooms in the county, or anywhere else that has this kind of law. In fact, there hasn't been any difference at all, except that transgender people know they can expect to have the same rights as everyone else. Baltimore City and County, Howard County, and Hyattsville also have gender-identity nondiscrimination laws in place. No men in the ladies room in any of those places, or in any of the nearly 200 jurisdictions around the country that prohibit this kind of discrimination.

Now the state of Maryland has passed a similar bill, the governor has said he will sign it, and it is like a big, bizarre, deja vu all over again. The shower-nuts are coming out of the woodwork again, talking about "the bathroom bill," demanding a referendum at the state level. Men lurking and leering, and so on. Exactly the same stuff.

It is a prediction that is already proven wrong. And the people of Maryland know that.

I'll get the news from CBS Baltimore:
Critics of Maryland’s newly passed transgender rights bill kick off a new effort to get the law overturned.

Monique Griego reports several delegates announced a petition drive against the so called “bathroom bill.”

The group is hoping to get enough signatures to bring the law before voters in November.

But supporters of the bill say this is just another attempt to mislead the public about what the law really allows.

The fight over transgender rights in Maryland reignites in Annapolis.

“This has just gone too far. It’s too extreme,” said Del. Kathy Szeliga, (R) Maryland.

Tuesday critics announced a petition drive to have the law overturned. MdPetitions.com is hoping to gain enough signatures to put the bill on the November ballot.

“It’s even kind of unbelievable that it did pass,” said Del. Neil Parrott, (R) Maryland.

The bill, which passed in March, updates Maryland’s anti-discrimination law to include gender identity, protecting transgendered people from discrimination at work, housing or in public places.

But many delegates, including Parrot, didn’t want public restrooms included.

“That’s the most harmful part of this bill. For parents, they want to send their little girls into the bathroom and there could be a man in there hiding. It allows for that to happen,” Parrot said.

That’s something supporters of the bill say simply isn’t true.

“There’s always a concern when someone launches an effort like this to mislead the public in such an intense way,” said Keith Thirion, Equality Maryland.

Thirion from Equality Maryland says this latest push is just another attempt to confuse people about who the bill protects.

“A man who puts on a dress to commit illegal acts is not covered by the bill and illegal acts remain illegal,” he said.
Thirion is hopeful Marylanders will see it’s about fairness.

“No one should be denied the opportunity to work for a living and provide for their families to have a roof over their head or to eat lunch at a restaurant, be denied those basic rights just because of who they are,” Thirion said.

Mdpetitions.com has two deadlines to meet: one in May and one in June.

Overall they need just under 56,000 signatures to bring the bill to a vote in November.

In 2012, the group successfully forced the Marriage Equality Act and Dream Act on the ballot, but voters upheld both. Group Seeks Referendum On Transgender Rights Law
They do not mention in this story that Neil Parrott is mdpetitions.com. It's his site. He had a petition there to stop the bill when it was in the legislature and he has a bill now to repeal it. You ought to see the graphic he uses:

I guess this is a bathroom stall, and a blue guy is climbing over the barrier to leer at a fully dressed, standing red woman. This is it, this is what they have?

I suppose you have to expect this sort of thing, but jeez, come on, there is simply no way the people of Maryland are going to vote to un-pass this law.

59 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

And more from WaPo:

"“It opens it up to predators, not necessarily transsexuals, but predators who will take advantage and go into the opposite-sex bathroom,” said Del. Neil C. Parrott (R-Washington County), who is chairman of the group.

Under the Maryland constitution, recently passed laws can be petitioned to the ballot by gathering signatures from the equivalent of 3 percent of those who voted in the last race for governor, which this year is around 55,700.

Proponents of the Fairness for All Marylanders Act say they consider the law an important piece of civil rights legislation that will ban discrimination based on gender identity in employment, housing and public places, which includes hotels, restaurants, theaters and sports venues. It includes an exemption for religious organizations, private clubs and educational institutions.

Restrooms were included in the legislation because lawmakers said transgender people are often ridiculed and sometimes assaulted when they use restrooms assigned to the genders of their birth. Supporters of the bill argued that there is no evidence that this law will be used by sexual predators to commit crimes, and criticized opponents for their insensitivity.

“Delegate Parrott’s misleading comments about bathrooms would almost be comical if he weren’t using these scare tactics to confuse the public and oppose basic civil rights protections in employment, housing, services, and public spaces,” Jer Welter of the FreeState Legal Project, a legal advocacy group that assists Maryland’s low-income lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) has praised the legislation, which was in the works for more than seven years, and has said he plans to sign it into law.

MDPetitions.com pioneered the use of Web-based technology to collect signatures for petitions and has played the lead role in challenging newly passed laws by putting them on the ballot, including the extension of in-state tuition rates to undocumented immigrants, same-sex marriage and a congressional redistricting plan. All three measures were upheld by Maryland voters. The group also tried gathering signatures to put the repeal of the death penalty to a vote, but failed...."

April 30, 2014 10:15 AM  
Anonymous ask Nate Silver, or yesterday's front page of the Washington Post said...

“A man who puts on a dress to commit illegal acts is not covered by the bill and illegal acts remain illegal,”

kind of a disingenuous nonsense statement

obviously, illegal acts are illegal

the issue is whether this bill makes it easier to commit an illegal act and get away with it

obviously, it does

also, and just as obviously, "a man who puts on a dress to commit illegal acts" is entitled to do so under this bill unless someone can prove what he's thinking

which, obviously, no one can until the illegal act has been committed

“No one should be denied the opportunity to work for a living and provide for their families to have a roof over their head or to eat lunch at a restaurant, be denied those basic rights just because of who they are,”

another disingenuous nonsense statement

transgenders only run into problems based on behavior, not identity

if you are obviously a guy and dress like a girl (dressing is a behavior one is free to change), a business that sells an experience may not want bizarre people interacting with clients on their behalf

a restaurant, for example, might not want to hire bizarre servers and create an unpleasant milieu

if no one can tell, on the other hand, there is really no problem

April 30, 2014 10:48 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

Anonymous, darling, the data are in. No transgender "bathroom bills" have resulted in any of those frightening things y'all imagine. Ever. Anywhere.

Could it be that some of the opponents of such non-discrimination acts just doesn't like transgender people?

When you have to imagine facts to be in opposition to something, their not facts. Just ask the Jesuits.

April 30, 2014 11:18 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

"Iniquitas radix malorum."

"Inequality, the root of evils."

Pope Francis

April 30, 2014 11:44 AM  
Anonymous ask Nate Silver and the Washington Post said...

Robert, I'm not part of an us'all

I do think this makes it easy for guys to pretend they are transgenders and get access to the girls room

truthfully, no problems have arisen because the law really hasn't had much effect, I've never heard much about it other than here

as I've said before, laws that have no purpose or effect are undesirable to a civil society

but there is also decorum to consider

it's possible if we made urinating on street corner illegal, it wouldn't cause any problem either

most of us'all would still object

"Could it be that some of the opponents of such non-discrimination acts just doesn't like transgender people?"

well, it depends

if someone is secretly a male and looks like a female, I really don't think most people object

I guess it would be a curiousity if they were to find out somehow

but, many people who are transgender appear bizarre

personally, I'd generally feel sorry for such a mixed-up person but you can't blame people for feeling a repugnance to thise who don't care about their appearance

how ironic that liberals try to cause alarm about a warming trend and yet a cooling trend is causing

"The U.S. economy barely grew in the first quarter as exports tumbled and businesses accumulated stocks at the slowest pace in nearly a year.

Gross domestic product expanded at a 0.1 percent annual rate, the slowest since the fourth quarter of 2012, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday. That was a sharp pullback from the fourth quarter's 2.6 percent pace.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected growth to slow to a 1.2 percent rate. The slowdown partly reflected an unusually cold and disruptive winter, marked by declines in sectors ranging from business spending to home building.

The Commerce Department's first snapshot of first-quarter growth was released just hours before the Federal Reserve wraps up a two-day policy meeting."

April 30, 2014 12:01 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt bad anonymous posted yet another one of his bigoted diatribes written in his typical grade 3 level grammar challenged "Every sentence is a paragraph" style.

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "the issue is whether this bill makes it easier to commit an illegal act and get away with it obviously, it does".

Obvious nonsense and you're well aware it is. In all the jurisdictions that have similar laws there's never been an example of an illegal act arising from such a law. This false alarmism is just an excuse to oppress transgendered people.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "also, and just as obviously, "a man who puts on a dress to commit illegal acts" is entitled to do so under this bill unless someone can prove what he's thinking".

Obiously not. The commission of an illegal act is prohibited regardless, it doesn't matter what the perpetrator was thinking.


Jim said “No one should be denied the opportunity to work for a living and provide for their families to have a roof over their head or to eat lunch at a restaurant, be denied those basic rights just because of who they are,”


Bad anonymous/Wyatt said "another disingenuous nonsense statement transgenders only run into problems based on behavior, not identity".

Nonsense. Our behaviors are not divorced from who we are, our behaviors spring from our identities. And in any case no one should be discriminated against for harmless identities or behaviors.

April 30, 2014 3:03 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "if you are obviously a guy and dress like a girl (dressing is a behavior one is free to change), a business that sells an experience may not want bizarre people interacting with clients on their behalf a restaurant, for example, might not want to hire bizarre servers and create an unpleasant milieu if no one can tell, on the other hand, there is really no problem.".

You're proposing that the rights one have be determined by their appearance. That's an outrageous injustice. If businesses exist by the support of the public then they are obligated to serve all of the public regardless of whether or not they think a person looks "bizarre". A person's appearance is not a valid reason to deny the best qualified person a job.

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "I do think this makes it easy for guys to pretend they are transgenders and get access to the girls room".

No you don't. That's just your cheap excuse to try to justify oppressing people who are harming no one. There's anti-discrimination laws that protect transgender people around the U.S. and there's never been a single example of a man harrassing women in a public bathroom or shower. It simply doesn't happen, there is no real concern that this might happen.


Bad anonymous/Wyatt said "truthfully, no problems have arisen because the law really hasn't had much effect, I've never heard much about it other than here as I've said before, laws that have no purpose or effect are undesirable to a civil society".

You aren't aware of any problems with women being harrassed because its never happened. The law has no effect on bigots like you or non-transgendered people but it has a huge effect on people who are transgender making their lives a great deal easier and shielding transwoman in particular from violence in mens bathrooms and showers.

April 30, 2014 3:04 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Bad anonymous/Wyatt said "but there is also decorum to consider it's possible if we made urinating on street corner illegal, it wouldn't cause any problem either most of us'all would still object".

That's a straw man. No one is advocating that making it legal to urinate on the street corner. That has nothing to do with this law.


Robert asked "Could it be that some of the opponents of such non-discrimination acts just doesn't like transgender people?"


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "well, it depends if someone is secretly a male and looks like a female, I really don't think most people object I guess it would be a curiousity if they were to find out somehow but, many people who are transgender appear bizarre.".

Oh, please, you don't give a damn about how a transgendered person looks, you just want to demonize and oppress them regardless. There are no more transgendered people who appear "bizarre" than there are non-transgendered people who appear "bizarre". In either case a person's appearance should never be used as an excuse to deny a person services, rights, or employment.


Wyatt/bad anonymous said "personally, I'd generally feel sorry for such a mixed-up person but you can't blame people for feeling a repugnance to thise who don't care about their appearance".

If a transgendered person didn't care about their appearance they wouldn't bother modifying their appearance to fit with the gender they identify with. You have no concern for transgendered people, you just assert you "feel sorry for" them as a passive aggressive way of insulting innocent people.

April 30, 2014 3:04 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "how ironic that liberals try to cause alarm about a warming trend and yet a cooling trend is causing

"The U.S. economy barely grew in the first quarter as exports tumbled and businesses accumulated stocks at the slowest pace in nearly a year."."

As we've repeatedly discussed global warming has caused the Jet stream to deviate southwards and warm ocean currents to stop moving northward from the gulf of Mexico resulting in colder Arctic air being pushed father southward than it should. The Arctic is much warmer than normal as is the bulk of the planet. What matters is that the world as a whole is getting much warmer, not that a fraction of 2% of the worlds surface area is colder than normal.

If Republican hadn't stood in the way of the American Jobs acts that economists (including John Mccain's economic advisor) said would have created 2 million jobs, forced huge cuts to government employment, refused to extend unemploymnet insurance benefits and refused to expand medicaid all of which would have stimulated the economy and resulted in millions more jobs the American economy would be doing much better.

Republicans like you have no one to blame but yourself. You voted against your own best interests.

April 30, 2014 3:17 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous wants to have it both ways. He wants to assert that this law will result in heterosexual men pretending to be women and violating genetic women in showers and bathrooms and he also wants to claim this has never happened because the existing laws have no effect and therefore should be repealed because they have no effect and laws that have no effect are undesirable for a civil society.

If Wyatt/bad anonymous really believed these laws didn't benefit transpeople in any way he wouldn't be opposing them. You never hear him railing about how the states with anti-sodomy laws should repeal them because they can have no effect thanks to Lawrence V Texas.

April 30, 2014 3:30 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interested Vigilance readers may want to sign Equality Maryland's Pledge to Stand for Fairness for Transgender Marylanders which reads:

"I support SB 212: Fairness for All Marylanders Act. Updating Maryland’s anti-discrimination law to include transgender Marylanders helps ensure everyone is free to work for a living, have a roof over their head, and eat lunch at a restaurant without fear of being denied basic rights just for being transgender.

I support the Fairness for All Marylanders Act and full equality for transgender Marylanders. "


Or maybe they'd like to sign Faithful America's petition "Sarah Palin doesn't speak for Christians", which was created in response to her having said "if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists."

That petition reads:

"For Christians, torture is not a joke or a political punchline, but a ghastly reminder of the suffering of Jesus upon the cross. By equating it with Holy Baptism -- the act by which we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection -- Sarah Palin is blasphemously twisting our faith into a weapon of hatred and violence. No media outlet should cover her remarks without reporting on how sincere Christians of all theological and political persuasions are appalled."

April 30, 2014 4:44 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Many Republicans think extreme force is the solution to every complex social problem.

April 30, 2014 5:27 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Here's another absurdity in Wyatt/bad anonymous's position on this anti-discrimination law:

He said "do think this makes it easy for guys to pretend they are transgenders and get access to the girls room truthfully, no problems have arisen because the law really hasn't had much effect".

Wyatt/bad anonymous would have us believe that there are heterosexual men seeking to violate women in bathrooms and showers but they haven't done so because the law hasn't helped transwomen. Obviously if heterosexual men wanted to use this law to violate women it failing to benefit transwomen wouldn't hold them back.

It doesn't get much more preposterous than that, but that's the sort of absurdity you're left with resorting to when you don't have any valid reasons to oppose this law.

April 30, 2014 6:28 PM  
Anonymous Davod S/ Fishback said...

In discussing this proposed referendum, we should remember to note that, five years after Montgomery County enacted such a law, our police chief, Thomas Manger, wrote to the Baltimore County Council to inform them that NO "bathroom incidents" had taken place in Montgomery County. http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2012/01/30/one-example-of-a-tool-to-fight-the-bathroom-bill-meme-before-us-all/

Baltimore County then enacted a law like the one that passed the General Assembly this session.

April 30, 2014 9:55 PM  
Anonymous David S. Fishback said...

Of course, Jim already laid out Chief Manger's letter in 2012 (along with Ike Leggett's letter):

http://vigilance.teachthefacts.org/2012/01/insane-in-baltimore.html#comments

http://vigilance.teachthefacts.org/2012/02/ike-writes-to-baltimore.html#comments

April 30, 2014 10:00 PM  
Anonymous Nate and the Post can tell ya said...

hey Davod

any anecdotes of people who previously had trouble finding someplace to go to the bathroom, who now have none?

my feeling is that bathroom clause is completely unnecessary

May 01, 2014 9:14 AM  
Anonymous Randy is losing it said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

May 01, 2014 9:34 AM  
Anonymous How soon they forget said...

"any anecdotes of people who previously had trouble finding someplace to go to the bathroom,"

Anedote? How about a video shot a few years ago in Baltimore showing what happened to a trans woman who tried to use a restroom.

"A transwoman was brutally and repeatedly beaten and dragged across the floor in a Baltimore McDonalds because she tried to use the bathroom. She received no help. Instead the employees watched and filmed it on their phones as she was been beaten so badly she had a seizure."

May 01, 2014 10:02 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

a horrible incident, obviously, but how would this law change that?

McDonald's didn't tell this guy he couldn't use the bathroom

some malicious people happened to be in the restaurant and beat this person up

beating up people is already illegal

it's not even clear that the person was attacked for being transgender

the victim was white and the attackers were black

you could as easily say the motivation was racial

this is similar to a recent incident where a transgender was attacked walking around Southeast DC at 2 in the morning and all the advocacy groups were saying we need legislation to protect transgenders

meanwhile, the rest if us provide our own protection by avoiding dangerous situations


May 01, 2014 10:40 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The attackers' comments and guilty plea to a hate crime made clear what they were thinking; their motivation was not racial.

Teen gets five years for attack on transgender woman at McDonald's

"...Teonna Monae Brown, 19, pleaded guilty last month to first-degree assault and a hate crime in the beating of Chrissy Lee Polis, 22. The April attack drew national attention after a video went viral online, and it became a rallying point for transgender-rights advocates.

Brown, who tearfully apologized in court Tuesday, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with five years suspended, plus three years of supervised probation, as prosecutors sought. The maximum sentence for the crimes is 35 years.

Vincent Paolo Villano, a spokesman for the National Center for Transgender Equality, said the group's focus is not Brown's sentence, but the hope that "people use this as an opportunity to educate other people." The point, he said, is that "everyone is treated fairly and equally."..."


What's your motivation to come here and post comments that are apparently so nasty Jim deletes them so often?

When are you going to learn to treat everyone fairly and equally?

May 01, 2014 11:02 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Using the bathroom at MacDonald's should not be a life threatening experience.

Crissy is a woman, not a "guy."

May 01, 2014 11:09 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

maybe the motivation was bias against transgenders or maybe not

the guilty plea doesn't necessarily prove it was

in any case, that's irrelevant

McDonald's didn't try to prevent the person from using the bathroom

they certainly didn't beat the person up

the law would not have any effect on the likelihood of this type of incident

beating people up is illegal and the evil elements of our society still do it

the victim was a male who had himself surgically mutilated I order to appear as a female

btw, Jim didn't delete the posts because they're "nasty"

he deletes any comments that indicate that a person's gender is the one they are born with rather than the one they choose

it his blog, he's free to engage in his personal viewpoint bias

May 01, 2014 11:26 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nobody said MacDonald's tried to prevent anyone from using the bathroom. It was two hate-filled teenagers who decided to beat the crap out of Crissy because she had used the lady's room.

Crissy didn't do anything to cause the attack except be who she is, a trans woman.

Neither attacker referred to Crissy with a racial term. They used nasty hate-filled terms like you do to describe transgender individuals.

May 01, 2014 11:54 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...


Wyatt/bad anonymous said
"Comment deleted
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.".

LOL, I love it when bad anonymous/Wyatt gets "dispassionate" because he can't compete in the marketplace of ideas.


The gender identity anti-discrimination law is useful in the Mcdonalds situation because it sends a message to the public that its okay for trans people to use the bathroom that fits their gender identity and they have a right to do so.

If Crissy's attackers had gotten this message prior to the incident it may have made them realize there was nothing wrong with her using the women's bathroom and no attack would have occurred. The same message of societal approval to the Mcdonald's staff may have encouraged them to call the police when the attack occurred rather than just watching as the perhaps thinking Crissy deserved it because she was in the wrong.

When society promotes the idea that its wrong, sick, and "bizarre" to be transgender as Wyatt/bad anonymous does it creates an environment of hate where people feel justified in attacking transpeople. Anti-discrimination laws such as this one send the message that society is accepting of transpeople and their right to use the facilities of their gender identity and diminishes that sense of justification for attacking transpeople in these situations. Its an indirect approach but its an important and effective one.

May 01, 2014 12:03 PM  
Anonymous nate silver knows said...

"Nobody said MacDonald's tried to prevent anyone from using the bathroom."

you're right no one did

but that's the law we're discussing

that's why the incident in Baltimore five years ago is irrelevant to this discussion

May 01, 2014 1:02 PM  
Anonymous randy thinks thugs worry the message to the "public" when they assault people said...

The gender identity anti-discrimination law is useful in the Mcdonalds situation because it sends a message to the public

May 01, 2014 1:05 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Absolutely the message society sends to people matters. At one time a black man would be severely beaten or even hanged for being seen holding hands with a white woman in public. When Loving vs Virginia was decided 70% of Americans opposed interracial marriage. After the highest authorities in the land sent the message that there was nothing wrong with this and people had a right to marry someone not of their race that attitude started changing and with it changed the sense of justification people felt for committing violence against black men who had white romantic interests.

Bigots like Wyatt/bad anonymous send out a non-stop stream of anti-trans demonization and this creates a climate of hate which emboldens people to violently attack transpeople and makes them think they are justified in doing so. When society counters that message of hate and violence with a message of acceptance and equal rights the climate of hate starts to dissipate and people don't feel so emboldened to violent attacks or that they are justified and sanctioned by the broader society.

We can never know for sure if an anti-discrimination law had been in place for a number of years if this would have prevented the attack on Crissy, but we do know for sure that it might have and that played out in a broader society of hundreds of thousands or millions of people it will absolutely diminish the number of such attacks that occurr.

Don't believe Wyatt/bad anonymous's disingenous statment that he thinks this attack was horrible. This is a man who supports Uganda's law that imprisons people for having same sex sex and sho said "Of course an increased number of violations of the law against gay sex should result in increasing punishment.". This is a man who said Iran was justified in executing gays.

Wyatt/bad anonymous puts up a facade of opposing the imprisonment of and violence against LGBTs but every now and then he lets his guard slip and we see where he really stands. Bad anonymous/Wyatt doesn't think the attack on Crissy was horrible, he's glad it happened and he seeks to encourage and justify those sorts of attacks with a disingenous "I oppose that" nudge/nudge/wink/wink.

The attack on Crissy five years ago couldn't be more relevant to the discussion on this law.

May 01, 2014 1:21 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The propaganda campaign people like Wyatt/bad anonymous wage against LGBT people is like the propaganda campaign the Nazis waged against Jews prior to the war. The messages society sends to the population most certainly have a powerful effect on the level of violence against an unpopular minority.

May 01, 2014 1:28 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The authorites and the laws they pass start the shift in public attitudes towards minorities. This is precisely what Wyatt/bad anonymous is afraid of and why he's so anxious to prevent laws like this from taking effect.

May 01, 2014 1:32 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

If Wyatt/bad anonymous honestly thought this law would have no effect he wouldn't be opposing it just like he doesn't oppose the laws against sodomy that many states still have on the books.

May 01, 2014 1:35 PM  
Anonymous Interesting words from Mary Gallagher, NOM said...

"A friend asked me, after reading my last interview with HuffPo [Leading Gay Marriage Opponent On Losing The Battle: 'I Have A Lot More Freedom Now'], “So are you really stepping down from the marriage and religious liberty fight?”

No, I told him. Sorry if it sounded like that. What I am advocating doing is three very big, and very hard things: a) accepting where we are and b) learning from what we did not succeed in so that we can get to c) how do we build anew?

Right now most people who believe in the classic understanding of marriage are in shock, they are awed by the powers now shutting down the debate and by our ineffectualness at responding to these developments.

The temptation to shout and yell and stamp our feet in ineffectual ridiculousness is understandable, but it is to be resisted.

The version of America we were born into is no more. For the first time in American history being a faithful Christian (or Jew or Muslim) now calls into question in the public square in a new way one’s good citizenship.

Well, yes. Now what?

I headlined this essay “Cooper, Mozilla, and Arizona” because each of these recent public news events highlights one feature of the challenge before us, and what we need to build to respond.

The rapid collapse of opposition to gay marriage we are witnessing did not just happen, and it was not inevitable. But it is.

The question now on the table is: will orthodox Christianity (and other traditional faiths), be stigmatized and marginalized as the equivalent of racism in the American public square? Will Biblical morality be wiped out as an acceptable public position in America?

Or will we regroup, rebuild as a subculture, and survive to become the possibility of a new foundation in the future?

Hiding or pretending is not going to help us, now. We have to face the truth. And we have to find the Love at its heart.

And we will have to do new things, not simply do what failed, over and over again, harder..."


It won't matter what you do Maggie. You were wrong to try to keep devoted same-sex couples from marrying and as long as that is your goal, you will still be wrong.

May 02, 2014 2:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maggie's right

eventually when the institution of marriage has been completely destroyed and gays are no longer marrying, it will seem harmfully silly that marriage was ever redefined to accommodate those who disregard its value and society will reawaken to the idea of gender complementarity

May 02, 2014 3:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maggie's right about this:

"The rapid collapse of opposition to gay marriage we are witnessing did not just happen, and it was not inevitable. But it is."

"...it will......society will..."

Oh brother!

Over the years, your predictions have not worked out very well.

Starting with 'the CRC will defeat the revised curriculum' to 'Huckabay (in 2008) and Romney (in 2012) will defeat Obama,' it seems failed predictions are your specialty!

I'll bet you didn't see this one coming:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 288,000, and the unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 6.3 percent in April, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment gains were widespread, led by job growth in professional and business services, retail trade, food services and drinking places, and construction.

May 02, 2014 3:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

wowie zowie!!

bet you don't know why everyone who lives outside the beltway thinks we're still in a recession

it because we have the lowest labor participation rate since the Depression

under Obama, we are becoming like a Western Europe socialist society where a large swath of the population has become long-term unemployed, without good prospects of ever working again

that group could be any size and we could still have a low "unemployment rate", as currently defined

you might also consider why Obama keeps doing victory laps about Obamacare and the public still detests it

May 02, 2014 4:44 PM  
Anonymous chortle-lay-he-whooo!! said...

maybe that's why Nate Silver is right

May 02, 2014 4:45 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Republicans have flooded the airwaves with ads lying about Obamacare, most Americans don't really know what Obamacare is, they've heard the lies so much they think they are the truth.

But that is changing now that 15 million people are covered under Obamacare and its medicaid expansion. Word of mouth is starting to counter the lies and the poll numbers are improving. Some Democrats are starting to run ads showing the benefits of Obamacare and highlighting the stories of people who've gotten affordable healthcare who would have been denied coverage prior to Obamacare.

The Republican lie machine is running out of steam on the issue of Obamacare. As word gets around and more and more Americans know someone who's benefited from the healthcare law the numbers will continue to gradually improve. Republicans know this and that's why they have started backing off from talk of repealing the law. Its no longer a winning position to talk about taking away something from so many people who've benefitted from it.

It no longer looks like a sure thing that Republicans are going to take control of the Senate in November. If there are no unforseen circumstances between now and then its more likely that Democrats will retain control of the Senate. That's why Republicans are now starting to shift from bashing Obamacare to trying to create a scandal out of Benghazi that isn't there.

They've got an email that was witheld by mistake that they laughably say is the "smoking gun" but it really says nothing that hasn't already been said almost 2 years ago and the repetitive and fruitless Republican hearings haven't turned up anything because there's nothing to find.

Bad anonymous called Bullsh*t on Nate Silver's predictions that Obama would win the 2012 election and he's been thinking Nate's his hero since he predicted on March 23rd the Republicans were a slight favourite to retake control of the senate. If Nate were to do the same analysis today I doubt he'd still be favouring the Republicans.

If you ask most people if they like Obamacare they say no, but if you ask them if they like the specific features of Obamacare:

80% support letting young adults stay on their parents plan

77% support free preventative care

74% support the medicaid expansion

70% support ending insurance discrimination based on pre-existing conditions

As time goes on more and more people are realizing Obamacare has the things they want in healthcare. By November Obamacare will likely be a winning issue for Democrats.

May 02, 2014 5:59 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Bad anonymous/Wyatt said "it because we have the lowest labor participation rate since the Depression".

Of course we do, The baby boomers are getting older and large percentages of the population is retiring. Obamacare has also allowed those who didn't want to work as much as they had been to cut back because they no longer have to stay in a job they don't want just to get healthcare.

These are the reasons why the labour participation rate has gone down - its a natural and long expected pattern resulting from an increase in the older demographic thanks to the existance of baby boomers.

For the third straight month the economy has created over 200,000 jobs. The unemployment rate is at 6.3% and Republicans can't handle it. They're freaking out because despite their every effort to harm the economy and block Obama's efforts to create jobs the economy is improving anyway.

May 02, 2014 6:06 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

May 02, 2014 6:39 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...


There's been 50 straight months of private sector job growth under Obama. Republicans forced Obama to downsize federal government by 2 million jobs and almost 1 million local and state government jobs have been cut almost entirely by Republican governors. If it weren't for the Republicans the unemployment rate would be a great deal lower than it is now.

Government jobs expanded under the "small government" Republican George Bush by almost 1 million. So far Obama has created 5.6 million private sector jobs whereas under Bush there was a loss of 646000 private sector jobs. So much for trickle down economics.

May 02, 2014 6:43 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Sociopathanon: "meanwhile, the rest if us provide our own protection by avoiding dangerous situations"

So, she had it coming by expressing herself, which caused that dangerous situation for herself?
--
Sociopathanon: "the victim was a male who had himself surgically mutilated I order to appear as a female"

Sociopathanon "it's not even clear that the person was attacked for being transgender"

It’s a terrible thing to be misunderstood. I had a similar experience once and I kept telling them, it’s not even clear that my screaming *THERE’S A BOMB!!!* is what actually motivated the people to get up out of their seats and run out of the theater all at once.
--
Sociopathanon: "beating people up is illegal and the evil elements of our society still do it"

Are you sure you’d call them evil elements of our society? I mean, don’t you think the acceptance of one’s gayness or being transgendered is evil? So If there are evil portions of society do evil unto them, wouldn’t that be good?

May 03, 2014 1:35 AM  
Anonymous let's ask Nate Silver what's going on said...

WASHINGTON — Democrats hoping improvements in the economy's course and the Affordable Care Act's implementation would level the playing field for November's elections should brace themselves.

A nationwide USA TODAY/Pew Research Center Poll shows the strongest tilt to Republican candidates at this point in a midterm year in at least two decades, including before partisan "waves" in 1994 and 2010 that swept the GOP into power. Though Election Day is six months away, at the moment, Democrats are saddled by angst over the economy, skepticism about the health care law and tepid approval of the president.

"People should start opening their eyes and seeing we're not on track," says Brenna Collins, 32, a small-business owner from Kasson, Minn., who was among those surveyed. "Things need to change."

By more than 2-1, 65%-30%, Americans say they want the president elected in 2016 to pursue different policies and programs than the Obama administration, rather than similar ones.

May 05, 2014 11:38 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

WASHINGTON — Prayers that open town council meetings do not violate the Constitution even if they routinely stress Christianity, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The court said that the content of the prayers is not significant as long as they do not denigrate non-Christians.

The ruling by the court was a victory for the town of Greece, N.Y., outside of Rochester.

In 1983, the court upheld an opening prayer in the Nebraska legislature and said that prayer is part of the nation's fabric, not a violation of the First Amendment. Monday's ruling was consistent with the earlier one.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said, "The inclusion of a brief, ceremonial prayer as part of a larger exercise in civic recognition suggests that its purpose and effect are to acknowledge religious leaders and the institutions they represent."

A federal appeals court in New York had ruled that Greece violated the Constitution by opening nearly every meeting over an 11-year span with prayers that stressed Christianity.

May 05, 2014 12:08 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "By more than 2-1, 65%-30%, Americans say they want the president elected in 2016 to pursue different policies and programs than the Obama administration, rather than similar ones.".

The RealClearPolitics average of polls only shows a .4% Republican lead. Things aren't as rosey for the Republicans as you'd like to think. Obama's approval rating is low at 44% but still much better than the low 30's that Bush was at in the sixth year of his presidency.

In the meantime in theoretical matchups for the 2016 presidential race Hillary Clinton leads every Republican contender by at least 12 percentage points.

The polls about whether people want the obama administrations policies pursued are skewed by the flood of republican lies and the Republicans blocking every attempt by Obama to implement any of his policies and programs. The public is mistakenly blaming Obama for not being able to get anything done.

Republicans blocked the American jobs act would have created 2 million jobs, 76% of Americans favour raising the minimum wage but Republicans blocked that. 69% of Americans favour extending long term unemployment benefits but Republicans have blocked that repeatedly. On healthcare

80% support letting young adults stay on their parents plan

77% support free preventative care

74% support the medicaid expansion

70% support ending insurance discrimination based on pre-existing conditions

And Republicans have attempted to block or repeal all those provisions.

May 05, 2014 1:04 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

And 73% of Americans support the Obama administrations policy of immigration reform but once again the Republicans have blocked what the vast majority of Americans want to see.

May 05, 2014 4:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Baltimore Sun Another Misguided Petition Drive

"These last few years will go down as a time when Marylanders took steps to recognize the humanity of those who have too often been marginalized. In 2011, the General Assembly voted to stop penalizing children whose parents brought them to the United States illegally when it came time for them to go to college, an important gesture in the nation's polarized immigration debate. In 2012, lawmakers extended equal rights to same-sex couples who wanted to marry. And in 2014, legislators reached out to perhaps the most marginalized group of all, those who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth, by passing the Fairness for All Marylanders Act, which Gov. Martin O'Malley plans to sign this month.

What was even more heartening than the action by the legislature and the governor was the willingness of voters to look beyond scare tactics from opponents and validate both Maryland's Dream Act and marriage equality laws at the ballot. Now the same group that so badly misread the will of the people in petitioning those two laws to referendum is again asking Marylanders to cast a vote for the cause of discrimination and repeal the protections for transgender people. We doubt the voters will be any better disposed to their efforts this time around.

The arguments advanced by Del. Neil Parrott and others who are organizing the petition drive would seem juvenile in a 3rd grade classroom. Rather than addressing the very real need to protect transgender people from discrimination in employment, housing and other matters, they are trying to convince the public that this bill will lead to a rash of men putting on dresses and going into public bathrooms to ogle women.

It's difficult to know where to start in explaining why this argument is ridiculous, and it's somewhat embarrassing for our state that we should have to do so. But here goes...

May 05, 2014 5:56 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

...First, it takes more than putting on a dress to be covered by this law. It requires that a person exhibit "consistent and uniform assertion" of their gender identity or present evidence that the gender identity is "sincerely held as part of the person's core identity." To caricature this as a bill about men in dresses is to demean the very real and often very difficult experiences of those who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

Second, the misconduct Mr. Parrott and others predict, including indecent exposure and sexual assault, remains illegal no matter the gender or gender identity of the person committing it.

Third, transgender people do, in fact, go to the bathroom now. Usually, they use the bathroom with which they identify, and the one with which the public most readily identifies them. Given that, by conservative estimates, half of one percent of the population is transgender, chances are that Mr. Parrott has already been in a bathroom with a transgender person; he just didn't realize it.

Fourth, it's not as if this is some new and untested idea. Seventeen states and Washington, D.C., already have similar laws, and it has not led to a rash of peeping Toms. Closer to home, four of Maryland's largest jurisdictions — Baltimore City and Baltimore, Howard and Montgomery counties — have laws protecting against discrimination based on gender identity. Howard County's law has been in effect since 2011. Since then, Howard County police have recorded not a single incident like the ones opponents of this legislation are warning of.

Finally, all this focus on who relieves themselves where obscures a tragic legacy of violence, discrimination and alienation transgender people have experienced simply as a consequence of being who they are. A 2011 report by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found that 81 percent of transgender Marylanders surveyed had experienced harassment at school and 71 percent had at work. Forty-two percent experienced an adverse job action — such as being fired or denied a promotion — because of their gender identity. And 54 percent had been verbally harassed or disrespected in a public place such as a restaurant, hotel or government agency. And that's not to speak of those who have experienced physical violence. Chrissy Lee Polis, who was beaten in a Rosedale McDonald's in 2011, is Maryland's most famous victim of anti-transgender violence, but she is hardly alone.

We would like to think that the petitioners won't be able to find 55,736 people who would be willing to sign on to their effort. But if they do, we have every confidence that the majority of voters will do just what they did when the Dream Act and marriage equality were petitioned to the ballot, and that is to reaffirm that we believe in the fundamental human rights of everyone who calls Maryland home."

May 05, 2014 5:56 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Fed report: Warming disrupting Americans' lives

WASHINGTON (AP) — Global warming is rapidly turning America the beautiful into America the stormy, sneezy and dangerous, according to a new federal scientific report. And those shining seas? Rising and costly, the report says.

Climate change's assorted harms "are expected to become increasingly disruptive across the nation throughout this century and beyond," the National Climate Assessment concluded Tuesday. The report emphasizes how warming and its all-too-wild weather are changing daily lives, even using the phrase "climate disruption" as another way of saying global warming.

Still, it's not too late to prevent the worst of climate change, says the 840-page report, which the White House is highlighting as it tries to jump-start often stalled efforts to curb heat-trapping gases.

However, if the nation and the world don't change the way they use energy, "we're still on the pathway to more damage and danger of the type that are described in great detail in the rest of this report," said study co-author Henry Jacoby, co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jacoby, other scientists and White House officials said this is the most detailed and U.S.-focused scientific report on global warming.

"Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present," the report says. "Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington state and maple syrup producers in Vermont are all observing climate-related changes that are outside of recent experience."

May 06, 2014 2:29 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

The report looks at regional and state-level effects of global warming, compared with recent reports from the United Nations that lumped all of North America together. A draft of the report was released in January 2013, but this version has been reviewed by more scientists, the National Academy of Science and 13 government agencies and had public comment. It is written in a bit more simple language so people could realize "that there's a new source of risk in their lives," said study lead author Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

Even though the nation's average temperature has risen by as much as 1.9 degrees since record keeping began in 1895, it's in the big, wild weather where the average person feels climate change the most, said co-author Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech University climate scientist. Extreme weather like droughts, storms and heat waves hit us in the pocketbooks and can be seen by our own eyes, she said.

And it's happening a lot more often lately.

The report says the intensity, frequency and duration of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes have increased since the early 1980s, but it is still uncertain how much of that is from man-made warming. Winter storms have increased in frequency and intensity and shifted northward since the 1950s, it says. Also, heavy downpours are increasing — by 71 percent in the Northeast. Heat waves, such as those in Texas in 2011 and the Midwest in 2012, are projected to intensify nationwide. Droughts in the Southwest are expected to get stronger. Sea level has risen 8 inches since 1880 and is projected to rise between 1 foot and 4 feet by 2100.

Since January 2010, 43 of the lower 48 states have set at least one monthly record for heat, such as California having its warmest January on record this year. In the past 51 months, states have set 80 monthly records for heat, 33 records for being too wet, 12 for lack of rain and just three for cold, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal weather records.

May 06, 2014 2:30 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

"We're being hit hard," Hayhoe said, comparing America to a boxer. "We're holding steady, and we're getting hit in the jaw. We're starting to recover from one punch, and another punch comes."

The report also says "climate change threatens human health and well-being in many ways." Those include smoke-filled air from more wildfires, smoggy air from pollution, more diseases from tainted food, water, mosquitoes and ticks. And then there's more pollen because of warming weather and the effects of carbon dioxide on plants. Ragweed pollen season has lengthened by 24 days in the Minnesota-North Dakota region between 1995 and 2011, the report says. In other parts of the Midwest, the pollen season has gotten longer by anywhere from 11 days to 20 days.
And all this will come with a hefty cost, the report says.

Flooding alone may cost $325 billion by the year 2100 in one of the worst-case scenarios, with $130 billion of that in Florida, the report says. Already the droughts and heat waves of 2011 and 2012 added about $10 billion to farm costs, the report says. Billion-dollar weather disasters have hit everywhere across the nation, but have hit Texas, Oklahoma and the Southeast most often, the report says.

May 06, 2014 2:30 PM  
Anonymous damn, that Nate Silver knows whereof he speaks said...

National Review has a very good analysis about what a bunch of asses global warming alarmists are

read with amusement:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/377208/wicked-orthodoxy-nigel-lawson

May 06, 2014 3:05 PM  
Anonymous Climate change denying asses will be drinking toilet water in Wichita Falls, Texas said...

"As three years of ongoing drought take their toll, Wichita Falls, Texas, is on the verge of becoming the first city in the country where half of the drinking water is recycled from wastewater — including the water flushed down toilets.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. “You can take any water and turn it into drinking water,” says Joseph Cotruvo, a Washington, D.C., water consultant who wrote clean water standards during his time at the EPA. Cotruvo recently told Businessweek, “There is the technology out there to take out everything.”

NPR reports on how the city’s adapting to its new, drier reality:

'The plan to recycle the water became necessary after three years of extreme drought, which has also imposed some harsh restrictions on Wichita Falls residents, says Mayor Glenn Barham.

“No outside irrigation whatsoever with potable water,” he says. “Car washes are closed, for instance, one day a week. If you drain your pool to do maintenance you’re not allowed to fill it.”

Barham says citizens have cut water use by more than a third, but water supplies are still expected to run out in two years.

So the city has built a 13-mile pipeline that connects its wastewater plant directly to the plant where water is purified for drinking. That means the waste that residents flush down their toilets will be part of what’s cleaned up and sent back to them through the tap.'


“The vast majority of water that enters a waste water plant did not come from a toilet,” adds Daniel Nix, the city official overseeing the process. “They come from sinks, and bathtubs, and washing machines and dishwashers.”

But will that be enough to get people to drink it? Professor Carol Nemeroff of the University of Southern Maine, who has studied reactions to reclaimed water, thinks it can be done: “If you’re desperate,” she told CNN, ”you’ll override anything for survival.”"

May 07, 2014 8:56 AM  
Anonymous Nate Silver sees all said...

here's an analysis of past climate change models and how accurate they are

turns out, although 95 percent of scientists agree with the alarmists currently, 95 percent of their past predictions have been wrong:

http://thefederalist.com/2014/05/06/climate-change-is-real-too-bad-accurate-climate-models-arent/

May 07, 2014 1:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nigel Lawson is a retired member of Margaret Thatcher's cabinet and has no background or expertise in science. He's a politician in the House of Lords.

Sean Davis is a former GOP congressional staffer who has also worked for Rick Perry, the GOP Governor of the state where the residents of Wichita Falls will soon get 50% recycled waste water fed into their homes. In 2013 Davis created another room in the right wing echo chamber of bad data and bogus conclusions called the Federalist.

May 07, 2014 5:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

and, as we all know, if you're not a climate scientist, you can only have an opinion if you are an alarmist

Al Gore gets a Nobel Prize for alarmism even though he has no idea what he's talking about

truth is, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows

and you don't need to be an expert to see that 95% of alarmist scientist predictions don't come true

May 07, 2014 7:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Another heat record for Wichita
Ever wonder what 1895 felt like?

Wednesday offered a hint for the Wichita area. The high temperature of 96 toppled a record that had stood for nearly 120 years.

The old mark of 93 was set in 1895, on the same day a newfangled device called the radio receiver was unveiled in St. Petersburg and a day after Halma won the 21st edition of the Kentucky Derby.

The record for high temperature is Wichita’s third in the last four days.

Tuesday’s 99 and Sunday’s 102 also muscled their ways into Wichita’s record book. Mercifully, cooler temperatures arrive on Thursday.

Read more here: http://blogs.kansas.com/weather/2014/05/07/another-heat-record-for-wichita/#storylink=cpy

May 07, 2014 10:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

please explain to me why it is discrimination to require that anyone that enters a female shower at age 15 have female genitals.

I am not complaining about post-ops.

May 08, 2014 1:46 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why don't you research and report back how many times pre-op 15 year old trans women have entered public showers to bathe with other 15 year olds.

Crissy Lee Polis did not shower or disrobe in the bathroom at MacD's. She deserves to be protected, not discriminated against when she uses a bathroom at a restaurant, as do all transgenders.

"Maryland conservatives’ quixotic fight against transgender protections
By Editorial Board, Washington Post

MARYLAND THIS year joined 16 states in extending protection to transgender people in housing, lending, employment, public accommodations and other areas. Now a conservative group, including some of the Republicans who opposed the legislation, is trying to force the issue onto the state ballot this fall, in the hopes that voters will reject it. If it manages to get the proposal on the ballot, it’s not likely to prevail if recent history is any guide. Nor should it.

Incredibly, the conservatives’ main line of attack is that the law will turn women’s restrooms into fertile ground for peeping toms disguised in dresses and wigs, even for similarly attired rapists. This is middle school trash talk disguised as policy analysis. There is no evidence that this is a statistically detectable problem in other states that have banned discrimination against transgender people, nor in Maryland localities, such as Montgomery County, that have had similar statutes on the books for years.

For one thing, the law’s rigorous definition of a transgender person — someone whose core identity is expressed by consistent and uniform expression — does not extend to men who might get their kicks wearing dresses to spy on women. For another, transgender people generally already use restrooms consistent with their gender identity, according to their advocates.

More broadly, opponents of the legislation tend to miss its central point, which is to ban the blatant discrimination that transgender people report is pervasive. In a 2011 survey conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality, 71 percent of transgender people in Maryland said they had experienced harassment or mistreatment at work and 18 percent said they had lost a job or been denied a promotion as a result of their gender identification. Seventeen percent reported having been denied housing. Shocking numbers of students in public schools report harassment (81 percent) and assaults (38 percent).

In seeking to rally support for overturning the law at referendum, Del. Neil C. Parrott (R-Washington) has focused on the supposed risks it may pose in public restrooms. But Mr. Parrott opposed the anti-discrimination legislation several years ago when it did not even include public accommodations.

Republican legislators opposed the legislation en masse, much as they opposed extending in-state tuition rates to undocumented immigrants two years ago. In the case of the tuition issue, Maryland voters demonstrated that they were more tolerant than opponents predicted; when Republicans forced that legislation onto the state ballot in 2012, voters upheld it at referendum by a wide margin.

Mr. Parrott and his allies need to gather more than 55,000 petition signatures to compel a vote on the anti-discrimination bill. If they accomplish that, Maryland voters will again have a chance to demonstrate their preference for tolerance."

May 08, 2014 9:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Spring Scorcher Has Some Parts of the Country Sizzling in Triple Digits With Extreme Weather

May 08, 2014 9:33 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Forecasts of global temperature rises over the past 15 years have proved remarkably accurate, new analysis of scientists' modelling of climate change shows.

The debate around the accuracy of climate modelling and forecasting has been especially intense recently, due to suggestions that forecasts have exaggerated the warming observed so far – and therefore also the level warming that can be expected in the future. But the new research casts serious doubts on these claims, and should give a boost to confidence in scientific predictions of climate change.

The paper, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, explores the performance of a climate forecast based on data up to 1996 by comparing it with the actual temperatures observed since. The results show that scientists accurately predicted the warming experienced in the past decade, relative to the decade to 1996, to within a few hundredths of a degree.

The forecast, published in 1999 by Myles Allen and colleagues at Oxford University, was one of the first to combine complex computer simulations of the climate system with adjustments based on historical observations to produce both a most likely global mean warming and a range of uncertainty. It predicted that the decade ending in December 2012 would be a quarter of degree warmer than the decade ending in August 1996 – and this proved almost precisely correct.

The study is the first of its kind because reviewing a climate forecast meaningfully requires at least 15 years of observations to compare against. Assessments based on shorter periods are prone to being misleading due to natural short-term variability in the climate.

May 08, 2014 1:27 PM  

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