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Russian Government #conspiracy #enbyphobia #fundie #homophobia #psycho #transphobia thestar.com

The Russian Justice Ministry on Friday said it has filed a lawsuit with the nation's Supreme Court to outlaw the LGBTQ+ “international public movement” as extremist, the latest crippling blow against the already beleaguered LGBTQ+ community in the increasingly conservative country.

The ministry said in an online statement announcing the lawsuit that authorities have identified “signs and manifestations of extremist nature” in “the activities of the LGBT movement active" in Russia, including “incitement of social and religious discord.” Russia's Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing to consider the lawsuit for Nov. 30, the ministry said.

The crackdown, which began a decade ago, slowly but surely chipped away at LGBTQ+ rights. In 2013, the Kremlin adopted the first legislation restricting LGBTQ+ rights, known as the “gay propaganda” law, banning any non-critical public depiction of “nontraditional sexual relations” among minors. In 2020, Putin pushed through a constitutional reform to extend his rule by two more terms that also outlawed same-sex marriage.

In 2022, after sending troops into Ukraine, the Kremlin ramped up its rhetoric about protecting “traditional values” from what it called the West’s “degrading” influence, in what rights advocates saw as an attempt to legitimize the war in Ukraine. That same year, the authorities adopted a law banning propaganda of “nontraditional sexual relations” among adults, too, effectively outlawing any public endorsement of LGBTQ+ people.

Another law passed this year prohibited gender transitioning procedures and gender-affirming care for trans people. The legislation prohibited any “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person,” as well as changing one’s gender in official documents and public records. It also amended Russia’s Family Code by listing gender change as a reason to annul a marriage and adding those “who had changed gender” to a list of people who can’t become foster or adoptive parents.

“Do we really want to have here, in our country, in Russia, ‘Parent No. 1, No. 2, No. 3’ instead of ‘mom’ and ‘dad?’” Putin said in September 2022 at a ceremony to formalize Moscow's annexation of four Ukrainian regions. “Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed in our schools from the primary grades?”

Dr. Melvyn Iscove #homophobia thestar.com

A long-time Toronto psychiatrist, who believes homosexuality is a “sexual disorder” that can be overcome, has been found guilty by Ontario’s medical regulator of sexually abusing two of his male patients.

Dr. Melvyn Iscove, 72, was described in a decision of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario’s discipline committee as having a “special interest in the treatment of patients with problems related to homosexuality.”

He also engaged in mutual masturbation and oral sex with two male patients on different occasions during therapy sessions, and once had anal intercourse with one of them in his office, the committee found.

“Neither complainant described any emotional or romantic aspects of the sexual activity with Dr. Iscove, and both said that at some point, they thought that the sexual activity was part of the therapy and an attempt to cure them of homosexuality by engaging in the acts, rather than fantasizing about them,” the five-member discipline panel wrote in a decision released this week.

Iscove testified in his own defence, and the discipline panel noted that he studied and applied the theories of Dr. Edmund Bergler, a psychoanalyst who theorized on homosexuality in the 1950s. Passages of Bergler’s writings introduced at Iscove’s discipline hearing included “All attempts to prove homosexuality to be anything but an illness had in my opinion failed” and “there are no happy homosexuals.”

The discipline panel found Iscove tried to “soften the effect of these passages, but in the end, endorsed or at least accepted them.”

“Dr. Iscove also became evasive in responding to questions as to whether homosexuality should be considered an illness, and whether it was capable of being ‘cured,’ despite that these views were clearly held by Dr. Bergler.” the panel wrote.

“Given that Dr. Iscove had admittedly devoted his professional life to studying and applying the theories of Dr. Bergler, it was not clear to the committee why Dr. Iscove refused to acknowledge that he agreed with Dr. Bergler on these points.”

“He stated that these patients only became responsive to his therapy when they were ready to fight it (i.e., the homosexuality),” the panel said

The doctor still faces a separate discipline hearing for an allegation of “improper conduct in a public men’s washroom,” according to his profile on the College of Physicians’ online register.

Justice Kathleen Caldwell & Dr. Mark Pearce #sexist thestar.com

[font=sans-serif]This post has one of the highest proportions of "legitimately serious possible triggers" to words I've seen: Count(triggers) / Count(words) hardly ever hits closer to 1 than this, so I'm not even going to try to list them; the "award" alone should give enough caution of what lies below. There are at least a couple things that cross over into other hotbeds of psychological traumatization, ones barely tangentially related to any form of child abuse or rape. I put what I thought were the worst parts in light grey, and I decreased the font size (partially for length and partially as a subtle, mild deterrent). If you decide to start reading this, and it starts fucking with you mentally, or even if you start wondering if what might come next will, then just stop. I should have. –shy[/font]

Court says ‘pedophilia does not apply’ — because perpetrator is a woman

Female pedophiles. She-monsters.

No such thing. Probably not. A woman can’t be a pedophile. Probably not. The clinical research is thin. Maybe the experts will change their mind, by and by. That happens a lot in the imprecise science of psychiatry.Although one expert’s mind was not changed by this:

A toddler sits at the woman’s feet, his small hands holding on to either leg. In this position, the woman — naked below the waist — masturbates using a baby bottle. The toddler, giggling, then grabs the bottle and drinks from it. The woman looks directly into the camera and smiles. That was one video seized by police from the Toronto home where the woman lived with her husband. On another video, the same woman is lying in bed with the same toddler. Both are naked. She begins to lick the child’s anus. Looking at the camera, she smacks her lips. A third video: The little boy is seated naked on a change table. The woman puts the child’s penis into her mouth. The child giggles.

In all, investigators discovered 25,066 child pornography images on more than 50 electronic devices when they executed a search warrant on April 25, 2016, including 111 child porn movies.

The couple is also shown engaging in BDSM (bondage/domination/sadism/masochism) activities with other couples. Police also found a contract signed by the “Slave” and her “Master,” an agreement containing rules and tasks to be completed by the woman as the submissive member in the relationship. They’d met through a website called “Bondage.com.” That’s who Jason Dickens and Dylan McEwen were, a man and woman joined in holy BDSM during a 2007 “collaring” ceremony — literally collaring — followed a year later by an ordinary wedding in front of family and friends.

Last week, Dickens, a former actor on Degrassi High, pleaded guilty to several child pornography offences, including two counts of making child porn, with an agreed statement of facts read into the record. Earlier this year, McEwen also pleaded guilty to sexual assault and two child pornography offences. She was sentenced to six years. But what the presiding judge would not do was declare McEwen a dangerous offender, which the Crown had sought and with impassioned urgency. In rejecting the long-term offender order, Justice Kathleen Caldwell weighed the various criteria that must be met, primarily a “substantial risk of reoffence.” Caldwell determined that McEwen wasn’t such a risk, relying heavily on the evidence and psychiatric report prepared by a forensic psychiatrist with expertise in paraphilia and sexual deviancy.

Dr. Mark Pearce was agreed upon as an expert witness by both the Crown and the defence when he testified in February. He diagnosed McEwen as a masochist and low-risk to reoffend [sic]. Caldwell accepted Pearce’s conclusion that McEwen derived sexual arousal not from acts committed against children but from the “extreme humiliation” of her involvement in those acts, which fed her masochism, described as on the moderately severe end.

The judge wrote (and read aloud in court): “Dr. Pearce testified that the current research suggests that women do not suffer from paraphilic disorders apart from masochism. This fact lends further weight to the conclusion that pedophilia does not apply to you.”

Crown Attorney Lisa Henderson, the judge noted, had “rigorously challenged” Pearce on this assertion.

“(I) agree that at first blush it appears illogical that women do not suffer from other paraphilic disorders,” Caldwell continued. “Sometimes, however, that which appears reasonable is anything but and vice versa. I accept the doctor’s evidence on this point. He did agree that this conclusion might change in the future as psychiatry continues to develop, but I cannot base my conclusions on speculative potential that have yet to develop.”

In this particular case, McEwen was her husband’s slave, committed to do his bidding. Court also heard, however, that McEwen had initiated at least one of the toddler videos without her “Master” present. And in at least two earlier instances, McEwen had obtained child pornography from two men she’d met online before she’d even met Dickens.

As for the risk-assessment testing, Caldwell acknowledged that such testing hasn’t been validated as being accurate in predicting risk with female, as opposed to male, sex offenders. They don’t really know what they’re talking about, the experts, because they haven’t looked at the phenomenon closely enough.

As an aside, at the Dickens trial, court heard that in 2003 a London-area woman offered him her 14-year-old daughter for sex after they’d connected online. Dickens took the teenager on a movie and date night, then had sex at the girl’s home while her mother sat beside them. Sex with teens and children had clearly been a feature of the couple’s role-playing, in their video commentary to one another, the child porn retrieved from their home and posters also discovered depicting female children, labelled with such descriptors as “15-year-old f--- slut” and “whore.”

In an interview this week with the Star, Pearce emphasized the scarcity of research literature on female sex offenders: “I’m not saying there’s no such thing as a female pedophile , but it is almost an exclusively male disorder. That’s not to say no woman has it. There may be some outliers. But women (sex offenders) usually offend for other reasons, not because of an innate sexual attraction to children. [...] These are damaged, needy, lonely women, not necessarily pedophiles.”

There was immense frustration at 720 Bay — in the attorney general’s office — over McEwen dodging the dangerous offender designation. But there will be no appeal.

Muslim mob #fundie thestar.com

CAIRO—An armed Muslim mob stripped an elderly Christian woman and paraded her naked on the streets in an attack last week in which seven Christian homes were also looted and torched in a province south of the Egyptian capital.

According to the local Orthodox Coptic church and security officials, the assault in the Minya province village of Karma on Friday began after rumours spread that the elderly woman’s son had an affair with a Muslim woman — a taboo in conservative Egypt.

Police have arrested six men suspected of taking part in the violence and are looking for 12 more, the security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi called for the culprits to be held accountable and gave the military a month to restore property damaged during the violence, at no cost to the owners.

In a statement issued Thursday by his office, el-Sissi said Egypt appreciates the role of “glorious Egyptian women” and that “the rights and the protection of their dignity are a humanitarian and patriotic commitment before being a legal and constitutional one.”

Anba Makarios, Minya’s top Christian cleric, told a talk-show host on the private Dream TV network that the 70-year-old woman was dragged out of her home by the mob who beat her and insulted her before they stripped her off her clothes and forced her to walk through the streets as they chanted Allahu Akbar, or “God is great.”

The woman reported the incident to the police five days later, said Makarios, adding that she had initially found it too difficult to “swallow the humiliation” she suffered and go to the police.

Attiyah Ayad, a 58-year-old farmer from a nearby village who witnessed the attack, described how the mob chanted “we must drive the infidels out” as they looted and burned the Christian homes, one of which belonged to his relatives. He said they were armed with firearms, knifes and sticks.

“They emptied magazine after magazine, firing in the air to terrorize us,” said Ayad, who suffered a head injury from being hit by a rifle butt and his son Ayad, 30, sustained a deep knife wound in his left shoulder.

The incident, intensely publicized since Wednesday night, has unleashed a flurry of condemnations on social media networks where users blamed the influence of ultraconservative Salafi Muslims for the attacks and derided authorities for not reacting quickly.

The hashtag “Egypt stripped naked” on Twitter gained traction shortly after it was introduced.

Timothy Sullivan #conspiracy thestar.com

Ontario teacher found guilty of misconduct for pushing anti-vaccination views
Science teacher Timothy Sullivan shouted at a public health nurse administering vaccines at his high school and told students they could die if they take the vaccine.

An Ontario high school teacher, who disrupted a vaccine clinic and told students vaccinations could lead to death, stormed out of a disciplinary hearing after being found guilty of professional misconduct by the Ontario College of Teachers on Wednesday.

Timothy Sullivan left the room following the verdict, as the college’s counsel presented the proposed penalty.

A penalty has not yet been determined.

Christine Wadsworth, counsel for the college, proposed that Sullivan’s teaching certificate be suspended for a month, that he enroll in and complete courses in professional boundaries, professional ethics and anger management, and that a reprimand be given in person at the Ontario College of Teachers.

During the second day of a two-day disciplinary hearing, Sullivan, who represented himself, provided testimony in his defense. He explained that he visited the vaccination clinic at his school three times on March 9, 2015.

During his visits, Sullivan said he asked for the inserts included in vaccine packages which list side effects and asked the nurses about whether they informed students of all the side effects.

During the first day of the hearing, Angela Swick, a registered nurse with the Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit, who was administering vaccines at Sullivan’s high school on the day of the incident, said she felt “threatened” by Sullivan when he visited the clinic.

She testified that Sullivan “asked kids if they knew what was in this vaccine and shouted at them not to get it.”

During Sullivan’s testimony, he said he never explicitly told students not to get their shots, but rather told them he “would not get vaccinated (himself) without knowing what was inside it and what its side effects were.”

“I work in a school where I’m responsible for young people. What was taking place 10 steps from my door was assault and battery. I had an obligation to go do something about it.”

He also denied shouting at the nurses, like Swick claimed.

“It wasn’t the way I asked the questions, it was the content of the questions that made the nurses uncomfortable,” Sullivan said.

He argued that what he did was out of concern for his students and his belief that they could not provide informed consent without knowing all of the possible side effects of the vaccinations.

“I felt it was my role to make students aware of possible side effects,” Sullivan said. “I’m negligent if I don’t point out different side effects of products. I’m responsible for every student in the school.”

He added: “It was actually one of the most professional things I did, making students aware of the side effects.”

Wadsworth, the counsel for the college, said it was not Sullivan’s place to have this conversation with students.

“It’s not a conversation that an activist teacher should take upon himself to have whenever he likes,” Wadsworth said during her closing argument.

Former principal of the school, Brian Quistberg, testified on Tuesday that concerns about Sullivan bringing up anti-vaccination views have come up in the past. One incident that Quistberg notified the school board about occurred earlier in 2015, when one student left Sullivan’s class in tears after giving a presentation on vaccinations.

Sullivan said Quistberg put him “in an impossible position, telling me not to talk about vaccines when they’re part of the curriculum and I have a number of students asking about them.”

The college’s counsel, Wadsworth, also raised issue with Sullivan leaving his class unsupervised while visiting the clinic to gather inserts on the vaccines.

“There’s concern leaving any class,” Quistberg said during his testimony. “Specifically science is a little higher risk because of gas, equipment, etc. It’s a safety concern.”

“The risk of leaving a group of grade 11 students for two minutes was worth it,” Sullivan said.

Wadsworth said despite Sullivan’s intentions and beliefs, that “doesn’t actually change the conduct of how things played out on March 9th.”

“He is entitled to his own personal opinions even if they’re controversial, even if they’re not supported by a wide scientific body of evidence but a line needs to be drawn when personal opinions affect his ability to perform his job as a teacher.”

The council has given Sullivan until March 8, 2017 to either provide a written submission or to schedule a date with the hearing coordinator for an in-person penalty hearing. After that, a penalty can be settled on.

Ali Erbas and Recep Tayyip Erdogan #fundie #homophobia thestar.com

ANKARA, Turkey - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday threw his weight behind Turkey’s top Muslim cleric, who caused a storm by claiming homosexuality “brings disease and causes this generation to decay.”

In his first sermon during the holy month of Ramadan on Friday, Ali Erbas also maintained that hundreds of thousands of people every year are exposed to HIV due to homosexuality and adultery and called on worshipers to come together to fight “this kind of evil.”

Opposition and rights groups condemned the comments by Erbas, who heads Turkey’s Religious Affairs Presidency.

But in a public address following a Cabinet meeting Monday, Erdogan said any attack on Erbas amounted to an attack on the state.

Erdogan — a pious Muslim whose ruling party has roots in Turkey’s Islamic movement — said Erbas had fulfilled the duties of “faith, the wisdom (of Islam) and of his office” and that his words were binding for all Muslims. He said the tone of the criticism against the cleric had turned into a “deliberate attack against Islam.”

The Ankara-based Human Rights Association has filed a criminal complaint against Erbas, accusing him of sedition, and the Ankara lawyers’ association accused him of inciting hatred. The association called for his removal from office, saying it would not be surprised if the cleric were next to call on people “to light torches and burn women as witches.”