Is a bad word like ny const art 1 sec 3 and Easter Sunday and church history
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
The ACLU Decides ‘Woman’ Is a Bad Word
The group bowdlerizes a Ruth Bader Ginsburg quote to refer to a ‘person’s’ pregnancy.
Demonstrators participate in the Women’s March in Washington, Oct. 17, 2020.
PHOTO: STEPHEN ZENNER/ZUMA PRESS
The American Civil Liberties Union has apologized for excluding the word “woman” from a Ruth Bader Ginsburg quotation in a tweet posted Sept. 18: “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person’s] life, to [their] well-being and dignity,” as the organization rendered the statement. ACLU executive director Anthony Romero told the New York Times that in the future the group “won’t be altering people’s quotes.”
But it will surely find more palatable ways to hedge the word, because doing so has become a progressive point of order. House Democrats qualified the word “woman” in a September bill by saying the term reflects “the identity of the majority of people” who might seek an abortion: “This Act is intended to protect all people with the capacity for pregnancy—cisgender women, transgender men, non-binary individuals, those who identify with a different gender, and others.”
The Justice Department made a similar note about “any individuals who become pregnant” in a brief filed against the Texas abortion law. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says Covid vaccines are safe for “pregnant people.” The White House budget’s neutered term for mothers: “birthing people.”
Such squeamishness about calling women “women” is notable from self-professed feminists. But tension between old-fashioned feminism and new gender ideology has been brimming for a while.
Perhaps you’ve heard of “trans-exclusionary radical feminists,” or TERFs? “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling was dubbed a TERF for pointing out the tension between trans activists’ goals and women’s rights. “I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it,” she wrote last year.
The new gender ideology aims to liberate humanity from biology but ends up defining us by it (“birthing people”) and binding us to an endless concern with the gender we feel. The feminist movement, with its intense focus on gender and embrace of the sexual revolution, helped pave the way for this. The sex obsession at the center of feminism is also driving the gender-identity movement. It’s exhausting and dehumanizing.
A meaningful feminism would promote the dignity of women and recognize that the word “woman” connotes a reality that transcends—but isn’t separate from—a female reproductive system. The word should remain part of our language, and hold its original meaning.
These progressive word games are intended to acknowledge that people who don’t identify as women can get pregnant. But it is no disrespect or lack of compassion to acknowledge reality: Biological sex is real.
Another reality: Language and the law are inseparable. If we erase sex-specific words from our language, we erase, too, what it means to be a man or a woman. Where does it stop? There are people—you can look it up—who identify as not human. Is person an insensitive term?
Ms. Ault is an assistant editorial page writer at the Journal.
The week's best and worst from Kim Strassel, Mene Ukueberuwa, Kyle Peterson and Dan Henninger. Photo: AP PhotoTHE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION
No comments:
Post a Comment