Random Notes!

Pamela Anderson is back in the news.

Canada's second most popular sweetheart, (After Shannia) made headlines again. (?)

First of all, because she went to Finland for a holiday, and then she said she has Finnish ancestry and would like to learn to speak the language!

Yippie shit!

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On a more serious note an article in the Toronto Star this morning states that Muslim girls in Toronto schools are being targeted for sexual assaults because attackers consider them less likely to report the incidents to authorities.

Nasreen Karim, an assistant manager at the Muslim Welfare Home in Whitby, said sexual assaults are embarrassing for immigrant from Pakistan and India because of their cultural ethos, not their religion.

He said; "I have a daughter myself and it would be embarrassing for parents to publicise things like this. They don't want to report incidents because of the shame it would bring on the family. That's just the way our culture is.

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Guest post by Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Columnist;

In 1960 something like 30 percent of respondents told pollsters that they wouldn't vote for a Catholic. That didn't keep John F. Kennedy from winning the White House in November.

Anti-Mormon prejudice reared its head during Mitt Romney's first political campaign which was his 1994 run for the Senate against Ted Kennedy.

Back then it usually manifested itself not as opposition to Romney's religion per se, but to the conservative political views of the Mormon Church, which Romney, as a faithful Mormon, was presumed to share.

But those were exceptions. While Romney's religion was often mentioned, there was a nearly universal taboo against explicitly condemning him for his faith. "In 1994," I wrote at the time, "no one dares suggest that Romney, by virtue of being a Mormon, doesn't belong in the Senate."

Thirteen years later, anti-Mormon hostility isn't so inhibited:

In Florida, televangelist Bill Keller informs his 2.4 million e-mail subscribers: "If you vote for Mitt Romney, you are voting for Satan!"

The Associated Press reports that a Romney trip to New Hampshire "started on a sour note" when Al Michaud, a Dover resident and self-identified liberal, shouted, "I'm one person who will not vote for a Mormon" and refused to shake Romney's hand.

In Warren County, Iowa, the local chairman of Senator John McCain's presidential campaign reportedly tells Republican activists that the Mormon Church funds Hamas and treats women the way the Taliban did in Afghanistan.

Al Sharpton, during a debate with atheist Christopher Hitchens, gratuitously says of Romney: "As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways."

Nevertheless, election campaigns are for choosing political leaders, not popes.

A candidate's public record has far more to say about his fitness for office than his private devotions do.

All the presidential hopefuls, Romney included, have made their mark in the worlds of politics, business, the military, or the law. Each has a history.

That, not what they believe about Jesus or Joseph Smith, is what voters should care about most.

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Guest post Michael Coren, Tornto Sun;

Now that the Gay Pride parade in Canada's largest city has ended we really should pose some of the serious questions that mainstream media seemed terrified to ask last week.

Questions that apply to any such event in Canada or elsewhere in the world.

First is the basic issue of truth.

The media constantly claimed that at least a million people attended the Toronto event. Which would indicate enormous approval of and support for homosexuality.

The million myth was given again and again until it became, as it were, a self-evident truth.

There may have been, tops, 250,000 people present, maybe less.

Anyone who has seen a photograph of a million strong crowd knows that such a mass of humanity could never fit into the core of a city.

It's also entirely relevant and wonderfully fitting that those assemblies that actually do attract a million people are invariably religious, orthodox and conservative. The Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, World Youth Day with the Pope, evangelical rallies in Asia and Africa.

It's part of the fraudulent politics around this issue that if the leadership of the gay community make a statement it is automatically believed.

(For the longest time it was "fact" that 10% of people were homosexual. We now know that the number is between 2% and 3% but, hey, we all make mistakes!)

The police have a sophisticated grid system that indicates the size of a crowd.

Odd, then, that they have said nothing when we hear of the magic million. Just as odd as their failure to arrest people over the years who take off their clothes during the Pride march.

There is ample photographic evidence of the nudity and of officers standing by, grinning and doing nothing.

For a community that claims only to want equality, one wonders why the law does not apply to all when it is broken.

Which bring us to question of whether it is abusive to take a small child to a parade where a significant minority of people are semi-naked, simulate sexual activity, bump and grind and even whip each other for some bizarre form of titillation.

There were many parents who took their small children to Gay Pride.

Yet if, for example, a parent sat a five or six-year-old down in front of a television and showed a DVD of people pretending to have sex and taking their clothes off, would we regard them as loving and responsible moms and dads or would we call the Children's Aid Society?

Taking vulnerable and powerless little children to Pride, however, has become a badge for those who boast how progressive they are. Proving that broad-minded often means empty-headed.

Gay men and women deserve respect and dignity and have the same right to march as any other group. Difficult to see what was dignified about what went on a few days ago and hard to understand why so many people are so reluctant to state the obvious.

You can e-mail Michael Coren through his website;

http://www.michaelcoren.com

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) at www.God-101.com