Gem of the Week: U.N. Elects Iran to Commission on Women’s Rights (Seriously!)

The United Nations, that august body of the world’s great statesmen, has decided in its infinite wisdom to elect Iran, yes, Iran, to its Commission on the Status of Women, a committee charged with the mission of worldwide “gender equality and advancement of women.”

Snapping into action, Iran immediately announced it would be leading the charge on various cutting edge women’s rights issues around the world.  Top of the agenda: henceforth, all public stonings and lashings of immodest women will only be permitted on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with severe beatings to take place on Fridays. 

Next up for the United Nations: North Korea to head the new U.N. Task Force on Human Rights in Emerging Democracies.  Keep up the good work, U.N.!

Gem of the Week: The Right to Disneyworld!

Tourism is now a human right in Europe!  Yep!  Not simply the right to move freely or travel about, but the right, if you are a European, to demand of your government a taxpayer-subsidized vacation to somewhere like, say, Disneyworld!  Euro-Disney, that is.  Wow, Europe must be such a wonderful place!  But where-oh-where do they get all that free money from?  I mean it must grow on trees over there!  Or maybe the Europeans who work at all the amusement parks, hotels, resorts and other vacation spots just work for free.  Not to mention all the folks working on the planes, trains, buses, etc. that are needed to transport everyone who chooses to exercise their new free tourism right.  Oh well, I’m sure they’ve got it all figured out.  Besides, who cares when it’s a free vacation!

With the big debate over here being about whether there is even a right to healthcare, those fancy European Union folks must think we’re just a bunch of heathens.  You can almost hear them in Brussels saying, “Healthcare a right? Oh, mon dieu! Of course that is a right!  We’ve wrapped that one up and given it to our peoples long ago, Messieurs.  Even Hitler and Stalin knew that! What is it with you provincial Americans and your so-called Natural Laws anyway?  No wonder we kicked you out.  Ignorant philistines!”

The Griswolds in Europe

Ah, yes.  It would indeed appear that the wise men and women of Europe have “progressed” to bigger and better things.  The Times Online reports that the European Union has formally declared that tourism is now a human right and that “pensioners, youths and those too poor to afford it should have their travel subsidized by the taxpayer.”  According to EU Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry, Antonio Tajani, “Travelling for tourism today is a right. The way we spend our holidays is a formidable indicator of our quality of life.”  According to Tajani’s spokesman: “Why should someone from the Mediterranean not be able to travel to Edinburgh in summer for a breath of cool, fresh air; why should someone from Edinburgh not be able to travel to Greece in winter?”  1

And why not indeed?  Well, I guess they always have been a few steps ahead of us over there.  I for one will not be completely happy (as is my right) until everyone has a right to a mansion and a yacht and a Maserati Quattroporte and, oh yes, a free lap-dance from that Taiwanese stripper I met the other night.  Now that’s what I call exercising a natural right!

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Fn. 1:  To view the full Times Online article, click here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7100943.ece

For a related post on this topic, link to:

https://culturecrusader.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/why-you-don%e2%80%99t-have-a-right-to-healthcare/

Gem of the Week: Glen or Glenda?

This week, the Maine Human Rights Commission moved to ban gender specific bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams in all public schools and even some private schools.  That’s right.  The girls’ room ain’t just for little girls anymore!  Nor is the boys’ room only for little boys.  Nor are locker rooms, showers, etc. That is, if the Maine Human Rights Commission gets its way.  (Just as an aside, whenever I see the words “Human Rights” linked with “Commission” I get very nervous.)

Apparently, this issue really got going last year when the Commission ruled that, under the Maine Human Rights Act, a school had discriminated against a twelve-year-old boy who identified himself as a girl (they call it self-identifying), by denying him access to the girls’ bathroom.  Now the Commission is looking to issue guidelines on how schools—including even pre-school and nursery schools—should adjust themselves in order to deal with this issue.  Maine would be the first state to implement such guidelines.  Not surprisingly, the Commission has drawn fire for this decision and has recently been compelled to back-pedal a bit, but the issue is not entirely a dead letter; it has merely been postponed. 

I’m just curious, does a twelve year old have the mental and emotional (to say nothing of legal) capacity to sort out all the factors that go into whether he/she is a boy/girl?  I’ve heard of adults making the transgender switch only to realize later on that they may have been a little too hasty (I think it’s called transgender regret).  So I wonder about the parents of a mixed up child being so positively certain that their kid is this or that other gender. Something to think about and I wonder if the Commission did think about it.  Also, while I am no doctor or school guidance counselor, I do know what it was like to be a kid in public school, and the Commission’s decision has “really bad idea” written all over it.

Oh well, just another example of progressives meddling with the culture.  Even worse: Maine progressives meddling with the culture.  If the Maine Human Rights Commission ever succeeds in pushing through its radical-progressive agenda, I sincerely hope that the old aphorism, “as Maine goes, so goes the nation,” proves to be no more than a fairy tale.