Los Angeles Times: Is There a Crisis of Truth?

What we’re now experiencing is not, I suggest, a Truth Crisis or even a Scientific Authority Crisis. The problems we are confronting are real but they are quite specific. Reflect back on the problems introduced at the outset. I’ve asked many people over the past months about the Crisis of Truth. They seemed to know what I meant and they agreed that there was such a Crisis. But, when asked to provide examples, practically all of them mentioned the same three instances — climate change denial, anti-vaccine sentiment, and various forms of anti-evolutionary thought. There’s no denying their importance. Material consequences follow from belief or disbelief in anthropogenic climate change or the safety of vaccines, but, although it’s depressing that anti-evolutionary attitudes are so widely distributed, it’s not evident that much of practical significance — beyond what’s taught in schools — flows from skepticism about Darwinism. [...]

Those who offer More Science in the curriculum and in the media as solutions of the Truth Crisis tend to equate science with accomplished science, textbook science, secure scientific facts and well-supported theories. A public better educated in these things will, it’s presumed, be better able to sort out reliable science from junk, pseudoscience, errors, and lies. But recall the shortlist of wrongly challenged knowledge that, on reflection, actually constitutes the alleged scientific Crisis of Truth. Evolution by natural selection is disputed in part because it opposes cherished articles of faith in strands of fundamentalist religion; vaccine safety is disputed in part because parents are desperately concerned to avoid risk to the health of their kids; human-caused climate change is disputed in part because, if it’s the case, people may have to ride a bike, eat less meat, and bring reusable bags to do their shopping. To put it in the blandest terms: disputed science is science that seems worth dispute. In the 17th century, Thomas Hobbes noted, and accounted for, a crucial difference between geometry and ethics — the deliverances of the latter are endemically subject to dispute, those of the former almost never: [...]

The problem we confront is better described not as too little science in public culture but as too much. Given the absurdities and errors abroad in the land, it may seem crazy to say this, yet the point can be pressed. Consider, again, the climate change deniers, the anti-vaxxers, and the creationists. They’re wrong-headed of course, but, like the Moon-landing deniers and the Flat-Earthers, their rejection of Right Thinking is not delivered as anti-science. Instead, it comes garnished with the supposed facts, theories, approved methods, and postures of objectivity and disinterestedness associated with genuine science. Wrong-headedness often advertises its embrace of officially cherished scientific values — skepticism, disinterestedness, universalism, the distinction between secure facts and provisional theories — and frequently does so more vigorously than the science rejected. The deniers’ notion of science sometimes seems, so to speak, hyperscientific, more royalist than the king. And, if you want examples of hyperscientific tendencies in so-called pseudoscience, there are now sensitive studies of the biblical astronomy craze instigated in the 1950s by the psychiatrist Immanuel Velikovsky, or you can consider the meticulous methodological attentiveness of parapsychology, or you can reflect on why it might be that students of the human sciences are deluged with lessons on The Scientific Method while chemists and geologists are typically content with mastering just the various methods of their specialties. The Truth-Deniers find scientific facts and theories shamefully ignored by the elites; they embrace conceptions of a coherent, stable, and effective Scientific Method that the elites are said to violate; they insist on the necessity of radical scientific skepticism, universal replication, and openness to alternative views that the elites contravene. On those criteria, who’s really anti-scientific? Who are the real Truth-Deniers? [...]

Rather, a difference between the two — and a consideration pertinent to links between expert Truth and political consequences — isn’t knowing science but knowing where science lives: who to recognize as knowledgeable and reliable; who to trust; which institutions to consider as the homes of genuine knowledge. Knowing this sort of thing — call it a kind of social knowledge — is a different matter than knowing the laws of motion, the nucleotide makeup of DNA, or the statistical means of determining global temperature and establishing its rate of change. This type of knowledge involves rightly knowing the scientific reputation of institutions; rightly knowing the integrity of those who testify to those reputations; rightly knowing the ascribed virtues and vices of the institutions and their procedures; and even rightly knowing the personal characteristics and material interests of the spokespersons for these institutions and those who testify to their qualities. It involves knowing whose opinion to take, and to take seriously, about matters of which you happen to be ignorant. That sort of knowledge isn’t technical, and people might say that it isn’t scientific, or even that it isn’t really knowledge — but almost all of the technical knowledge that we have is held on that basis. In the distant past, I did advanced scientific work (in genetics, as it happens), but — and I speak here just for myself — everything that I know about climate change, including my knowing that Trump is wrong, is held courtesy of this social knowledge. Being a knowledgeable person may mean knowing a lot of stuff, but it certainly means knowing who knows and who does not know.

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Los Angeles Times: Coffee is still a no-go for Mormons even if you call it caffe or mochaccino

The rules prohibit alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs and coffee and tea. They are based on what church members believe was a revelation from God to founder Joseph Smith in 1833. The faith’s rejection of coffee has long generated curiosity and more than a few jokes, including a scene in the biting satirical Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon,” in which dancing cups of coffee appear in a missionary’s nightmare. [...]

“The word coffee isn’t always in the name of coffee drinks. So, before you try what you think is just some new milkshake flavor, here are a couple of rules of thumb: One, if you’re in a coffee shop (or any other shop that’s well-known for its coffee), the drink you’re ordering probably has coffee in it, so either never buy drinks at coffee shops or always ask if there’s coffee in it,” the article said. “Two, drinks with names that include cafe or caffe, mocha, latte, espresso, or anything ending in -ccino usually have coffee in them and are against the Word of Wisdom.” [...]

Jana Riess, a church member and author, said she was shocked to find that four in 10 active church members under age 51 had drunk coffee during the previous six months in a 2016 survey she conducted for her book “The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church.”

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Los Angeles Times: How will Turkey’s authoritarian president react to opposition’s big win in Istanbul mayoral race?

Ekrem Imamoglu of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, won 54% of the vote, soundly beating the AKP’s Binali Yildrim, who took 45%. It was a far wider margin of victory than Imamoglu achieved in the original March 31 vote.

Turnout was very high — 85% — in part reflecting public unhappiness over the recount that was ordered on technical grounds by the country’s highest electoral body, widely suspected of acting at the president’s behest.

Erdogan offered congratulations to Imamoglu, and Yildrim conceded graciously even before the votes had all been tallied. But in a sign some read as ominous, Monday-morning headlines in pro-government newspapers made no reference to the opposition victory, instead merely noting that the vote had taken place. [...]

The central government could take steps to sap Imamoglu’s administrative powers, or even invent a reason to charge him personally with a criminal offense of some kind, a fate that has befallen many of the president’s foes. [...]

Criticism of the president, once rare, burst into the open. Mustafa Yeneroglu, an AKP parliament member from Istanbul, tweeted: “We lost Istanbul because we lost moral superiority.”

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Los Angeles Times: States with the worst anti-abortion laws also have the worst infant mortality rates

States with the largest number of abortion restrictions such as mandatory waiting periods, counseling and ultrasounds; restrictions on insurance coverage for abortions in public or private health plans; and unnecessary standards on ambulatory abortion clinics tended to have the fewest number of supportive policies, the survey found. Those included Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act; family leave; sex- and HIV education programs; and good access to children’s health insurance programs. [...]

These statistics should give the lie to legislators’ arguments that their anti-abortion measures are somehow good for women’s health or aimed at protecting their rights. A 2017 study by the Center for Reproductive Rights and IBIS Reproductive Health, a healthcare think tank, found that hostility to reproductive rights tended to go hand-in-hand with a lack of state-level policies supporting women’s and infant health. [...]

Experts have connected the dots between abortion restrictions and maternal and infant health problems. Limits on access to legal abortions can prompt women to choose unsafe alternatives. Indeed, the reported rate of maternal deaths in Texas soared from 72 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2010 to 148 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2012, a trend that some experts attributed to the state’s closing of abortion clinics and cuts in funding for Planned Parenthood and other family planning services during the same period.

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Los Angeles Times: If you think mass shootings are becoming more frequent, and worse — you're right

Gardner is an epidemiologist at the University of Ottawa who blogs frequently at the Incidental Economist, an indispensable health policy website. He based his most recent post there on a roster of mass shootings produced by my colleagues here at The Times on Oct. 2, the day after the Las Vegas massacre, which took the lives of 58 spectators at a country music festival and injured more than 500 others. [...]

Gardner’s analysis of episodes since 1984 underscores that most mass shootings (which experts generally define as incidents with four or more casualties) involve five to 19 deaths. But there is also “a series of ultra casualty events,” he wrote in October, shortly after Las Vegas. “The death rate in these massacres has almost tripled since 2000.” [...]

“Either we’re going to have to start doing something to prevent this,” he told me, “or we’re going to have to turn our public spaces into high-defense camps. Are all public spaces going to have to be under surveillance? Are we going to do facial recognition of everyone going down every street? That seems like a real dystopian future.” [...]

Gardner’s data graphs suggest that at least one more mass killing by gunfire is due in the U.S. before the end of the year. The chances are low it will lead to more firearms regulation, when the previous wave has not.

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Los Angeles Times: As he coddles neo-Nazis, Trump’s political isolation increases

And, indeed, it was a defining moment. It made crystal clear the truth that Donald Trump cannot shake his warm feelings for “blood and soil” racists who see him as their ally. White nationalist leader Richard Spencer is absolutely on target with his contention that, though Trump may not be ideologically in lock step with the movement, the president has a “psychic connection” with the alt-right. [...]

On Wednesday, Trump rushed to dissolve two highly-touted business advisory councils before all the CEOs on those panels quit. Business leaders had been bolting for the exits like an audience in a burning circus tent after Trump failed to make a distinction between the Nazi sympathizers who invaded Charlottesville and the people who showed up to protest their vile philosophy. On Tuesday, Trump slammed the departing CEOs as “grandstanders” and said he could easily replace them, but, by Wednesday, the president must have realized no prominent businessman in his right mind now wants to ruin his reputation by colluding with him.

In another dramatic move, five top military leaders — the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and National Guard — made strong statements condemning racism and Nazism. The Army chief of staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, sent out a tweet that said, “The Army doesn’t tolerate racism, extremism or hatred in our ranks. It’s against our values and everything we’ve stood for since 1775.” Such pointed comments from the military’s top brass are highly unusual and are a sharp, if indirect, rebuke to the commander in chief. [...]

But Trump still has his base. And he will cling to them and coddle them, even if some among them are Nazis and white supremacists. It is a twisted neediness that makes Donald Trump blind to obvious evil.

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Los Angeles Times: Taiwan's high court paves the way for same-sex marriage, a first in Asia

The Constitutional Court ruled that it is illegal to ban marriages between two people of the same sex and ordered parliament to change the civil code within two years to bring it in line with the constitution, a court official said. Today’s conditions are “in violation of both the people’s freedom of marriage … and the people’s right to equality,” the judiciary's secretary-general, Lu Tai-lang, said. [...]

While Japan and South Korea are also democracies, Japan has less of a sense of multiculturalism and South Korea is strongly influenced by Christian conservatives, creating impediments to same-sex marriage, said Jens Damm, associate professor in the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Studies at Chang Jung University in Taiwan.

Indonesia and Malaysia, because of the prevalence of Islam, would find little backing compared to Taiwan despite their democratic governments. Countries under authoritarian rule limit social activism, a common prerequisite for government attention to LGBTQ causes. Taiwan lifted martial law in the 1980s after decades of authoritarian rule. [...]

Christian churches joined activists supporting traditional Chinese family values favoring households headed by one man and one woman. Some argued that the death of a same-sex spouse would leave the survivor dependent on government support because many same-sex couples would not have children to support them in old age, a common phenomenon in Chinese societies such as Taiwan.

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Los Angeles Times: In Belarus, a rising fear: Will we be the next Ukraine?

At the heart of the feud is the status of what is quietly referred to here as the “oil for kisses” deal, in which Russia supplies Belarus with subsidized oil and gas in exchange for Minsk’s loyalty.

When Russia in 2015 refused to lower its gas prices to reflect a decrease in global oil prices, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko began exploring closer relations with the West.

Lukashenko has refused so far to recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Last year, he said no to a Kremlin proposal to build a Russian air base in eastern Belarus.

Lukashenko, who has ruled this former Soviet republic with an authoritarian grip for 22 years, bowed to Western pressure in 2015 to release six prominent political prisoners, and ushered in a period of “softening” against political dissent and public gatherings. This earned him cautious praise from Western governments, which subsequently lifted sanctions on Belarus.[...]

In recent weeks, public protests have sprung up in Minsk and a few regional cities against an unpopular law instituting a yearly flat tax on the unemployed. So far, the protests have been small, and authorities have not cracked down on demonstrators, a rarity in Lukashenko’s tightly controlled Belarus.

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Los Angeles Times: The Trumpist future: A world without an exceptional America

Never before has a modern president said he doesn’t believe the United States is special. Barack Obama came close, but when conservatives howled he beat a hasty retreat. [...]

When traditional politicians describe American exceptionalism, they usually talk about values — about democracy, or individual freedom, or entrepreneurship, or racial and ethnic diversity. Trump’s measure of exceptionalism was material wealth — specifically, the trade balance and national debt.

In his inaugural address last month, he barely mentioned American values. He promised to defeat Islamic State (“Make America safe again”) and revive the economy (“Make America wealthy again”). But the word “democracy” wasn’t there at all.

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Vox: 100 years ago, Americans talked about Catholics the way they talk about Muslims today

This may seem absurd today, but there was a real fear among Protestant Americans back then that Catholics were planning to take over the country. As Pearce reported, the fears led to serious violence: Lynch mobs killed Catholic Italians, arsonists burned down Catholic churches, and there were anti-Catholic riots. It was a similar sentiment to the kind of Islamophobia today that’s led many Americans to call for shutting down mosques, forcing Muslims to register in a national database, and even banning Islam.

The point of the comparison is not to say that the US faces the same problems today as it did a century ago, or that the discrimination toward Catholics back then and Muslims today is exactly the same. But when looking back at the history of the US, it’s easy to see a pattern of consistent xenophobia and fears of outsiders. [...]

But this sort of rhetoric is not new to the US. As the Pew Research Center found, Americans have generally opposed taking in refugees even as they went through abhorrent, well-known crises. (Dara Lind reported for Vox that America even rejected some Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.)

Xenophobia has fueled other policies too. In the late 19th century, the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to stop the flow of Chinese laborers into the US. During World War II, the US put Japanese Americans in internment camps after the country declared war on Japan. Throughout the war on drugs, lawmakers have regularly tapped into xenophobic sentiments to prohibit certain drugs — such as when San Francisco banned opium smoking that was perceived as popular among Chinese immigrants, and when prohibitionists built up opposition to marijuana by fearmongering about its use among Mexican immigrants.

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Los Angeles Times: European Court strikes down Britain's sweeping surveillance law

The country is on the verge of adopting what critics say is the most extensive surveillance law to be adopted in the Western world. The Investigatory Powers Act, approved by Parliament last month, enables the British government to undertake the bulk interception of electronic communications of ordinary citizens.

More specifically, it requires Internet and phone companies to keep the records of every call made, online message sent and website visited by customers for 12 months. Public organizations would then be able access these communications, sometimes without a warrant, and also without the individual being made aware they were under surveillance.

The security services argue that mass surveillance of this scale is necessary in order to keep citizens safe during a time of heightened threats, global terrorist attacks and cyberwarfare. But human rights groups have long said that while some surveillance is necessary, the basic privacy of citizens should not be violated in the process.

Following a legal challenge, Britain's High Court found the surveillance law breached fundamental rights, but the government appealed and the case was referred to the European Court of Justice.

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Los Angeles Times: Britain's sweeping surveillance powers act raises concerns for human rights activists

“It defies common sense,” said Carlo, policy officer at human rights organization Liberty. “We are very, very resolutely in opposition to mass surveillance, which can never be considered proportionate or necessary in a democracy.”

But after a year of debate, the Investigatory Powers Bill was approved by Parliament last week and is expected to be ratified into law by the end of the year. The bill includes measures that will force Internet and phone companies to keep a record of the complete Web browsing history of British citizens for up to 12 months, in case they need to be accessed by government agencies.

It also allows the government to obtain “bulk personal data sets,” even if most of the individuals are not suspected of any wrongdoing. [...]

In essence, the bill will force Internet and phone companies to keep records of all users for up to a year, including every website visited and every phone call made, including duration, date and time.

Such surveillance does not have to be targeted or based on any reasonable suspicion and this personal data can be accessed without a warrant in some instances.

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Los Angeles Times: Germany buys Thomas Mann's former Pacific Palisades home, averting demolition

The home, built in 1941 and designed by modernist architect J.R. Davidson, had been listed this summer for just under $15 million. Sitting on a flat lot measuring almost one acre, it had been labeled a tear-down.

But the prospect of bulldozing the secluded five-bedroom home generated protest. An online petition called on the German government to save the home, describing it as a monument to German exiles in California and resistance to the Nazi regime.

The mansion ultimately was purchased for $13.25 million, according to the listing page.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the residence symbolized “a home for many Germans who worked toward a better future for their country, paved the way for an open society and laid the foundations for common transatlantic values,” according to a statement posted by the German consulate in Los Angeles.

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Los Angeles Times: Jewish Americans don't vote with Israel in mind, they vote as liberals

Although Jewish Americans represent just 2% of the population, politicians — and would-be politicians — have long considered the “Jewish vote” a prize worth pursuing. That’s actually not irrational. Jews contribute a disproportionate amount of money to political candidates and causes; many Jews live in the swing states of Florida (846,700 of 19.9 million), Pennsylvania (324,700 of 12.8 million), Ohio (173,700 of 11.6 million), and Michigan (105,200 of 9.9 million); and Jews tout a stellar turnout record of  80%, according to multiple sources.  [...]

Israel was the “most important” voting issue for a mere 4% of respondents in the Public Religion Research Institute’s 2012 Jewish Values survey. Israel was one of two top “voting issue priorities” for just 10% in a J Street poll conducted around the same time. More recently, “U.S.-Israel relations” was the most important issue for only 7.2% in the American Jewish Committee’s 2015 study of Jewish American opinion, ranking fifth behind “economy” (41.7%), “national security” (12.3%), “healthcare” (12%), and “income inequality” (11.6%). It was the second and the third-most important issue for only 7.6% and 11.1%, respectively. [...]

Indeed, the Pew Research Center’s landmark 2013 survey “A Portrait of Jewish Americans” found that caring about Israel was an “essential part of being Jewish” for 53% of Jews 65 and older. By comparison, only 32% of Jews 18 to 29 expressed that same sentiment. It’s also estimated that Jews constitute at least 20% of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement. And take what you will from this: American Jewry was effectively split down the middle over the Iran nuclear deal, which made the community’s support for the deal 20 percentage points higher than for Americans overall.

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Los Angeles Times: In Germany, it can be a crime to insult someone in public

After Ali Sonboly went on a rampage that killed nine people, he stood on the roof of a parking garage and engaged in a strange shouting match with a man on a nearby balcony. Thomas Salbey, a 57-year-old backhoe operator, hurled a seemingly never-ending stream of epithets at the teenage gunman and threw a beer bottle at him; the profanity-laced exchange was captured in a cellphone video that was widely shared on social media and TV news.

A local woman requested charges be brought against Salbey after watching the clip on television — and, if charged, Salbey could have ended up in jail for a year or faced a hefty fine for his coarse language. [...]

There were 218,414 cases of insults filed with prosecutors in Germany in 2015, down slightly from 225,098 in 2014, but far above numbers of around 150,000 recorded a decade ago. Americans and other foreigners living in Germany sometimes run afoul of the law, unaware of it, and end up being called into police or prosecutor’s offices to explain their side of the story, before their cases are usually dismissed.

Hardly anyone ends up in jail for insulting their neighbor in the midst of a heated dispute, or for flashing the middle finger — the Stinkefinger, or “stinky finger” as Germans call it — at another motorist in heavy traffic. But cases do wind up in court and fines are sometimes handed down. [...]

A Berlin court awarded one person 8,190 euros in 2011 for insults published against him in social media; in a 2012 case, a trainee who made disparaging remarks about her boss on Facebook had to pay 2,500 euros in damages. A student accepted a 5,000 euro out-of-court settlement in 2013 for racist remarks made in a rap song about him posted on YouTube. The 13-year-old's family had originally demanded 14,000 euros in court.

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Los Angeles Times: Have Jews abandoned their committment to social justice?

A coalition of groups active in the Black Lives Matter movement recently published a platform filled with demands. Most were important, like an end to mass incarceration. A few were silly, like low-interest loans to promote food co-ops. And one included a passage seemingly designed to enrage Jews. By way of discussing foreign aid, it claims that Israel is “complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.” [...]

But the major issue I see is that many Jews who will use this platform as an excuse to reject Black Lives Matter aren’t much interested in African American issues, anyway. Despite our history of social action—including vocal participation in the 1960s civil rights movement—Jews have become increasingly detached from the needs of oppressed people, of all races. [...]

For most of Jewish history, we were relatively poor. But in the United States today, only ethnic Indians rival Jews for household income or education levels. With rising affluence, Jews left urban centers, where they knew people of many ethnicities, for suburbs. Our synagogues followed, and every major American city has a synagogue — often many synagogues — that abandoned an old, downtown building for a new suburban campus. [...]

ut in general, we write checks from our affluent enclaves, vote Democratic, and call it a day. We worry about the safety of Israel, and Jews in anti-Semitic Europe, but have basically given up creating structural change in America. That doesn’t excuse ugly anti-Semitism in Black Lives Matter, but it makes us poor messengers for a better way.

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Los Angeles Times: Battle over women praying at Jerusalem's Western Wall continues as compromise stalls

In recent months, tensions over women’s prayer have been escalating, and a compromise aimed at ending the dispute has stalled. Under the deal approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet in January, Women of the Wall and liberal Jewish denominations would be given a new prayer space at a nearby spot along the Western Wall. However, the government hasn’t started implementing the compromise and ultra-Orthodox parties oppose it.  [...]

The dispute over women’s prayer at Western Wall, known in Hebrew as the Kotel, has roiled relations between Netanyahu — who relies on ultra-Orthodox religious parties to stabilize his coalition — and religiously liberal Diaspora Jews who complain that Israel’s conservative government is impeding religious freedom at Judaism’s most revered prayer site. [...]

The Jewish Agency, a nonprofit group promoting Jewish immigration to Israel, which helped broker the Western Wall compromise after three years of negotiations, warned in a statement that failure to provide a space for pluralist prayer at the wall would have “far-reaching implications” for Israel-Diaspora ties.

Tensions over religion and state in Israel stretch back to the country’s founding, when Israel’s secular founders promised to defer to Orthodox Jewish leaders on public Jewish ritual, marriage and Sabbath observance in order to secure their support for the new state. 

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Los Angeles Times: One thing the polls agree on: Voters don't like their choices

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll, for example, finds 58% of voters are dissatisfied with the choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Among those surveyed, 64% had an unfavorable view of Trump, while 54% felt unfavorably toward Clinton.

A new NBC News/Wall St. Journal survey offered a similar verdict: Trump was viewed favorably by 27% of those surveyed and unfavorably by 60%. That net negative rating of -33 points is the worst in the history of the poll.But Clinton's image is only somewhat better: 34% positive, 56% negative.  [...]

Rather than flocking to a third choice, many voters are being driven by negative feelings about the candidate they don't like, more than positive feelings about their own candidate. That's particularly true for Trump, who leads a party still badly divided between his supporters and detractors. [...]

One political figure Americans do like: President Obama. His job approval continues to stay above 50%, at some of the highest levels of his presidency. That has helped buoy Clinton, even as concerns over her handling of classified information in her email while secretary of State have pulled her downward.

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Los Angeles Times: Hong Kong demands that candidates take pro-China pledge, threatens prison if they won't

In an unprecedented move, Hong Kong electoral officials are asking all candidates running for the legislature in September to pledge under oath that the territory is an inalienable part of China.

The measure, announced Thursday, two days before the period to nominate candidates opened, is believed to be aimed at appeasing Beijing by blocking any candidate who advocates independence from China. Both the long-established pan-Democratic camp of politicians and new political parties founded by young pro-democracy activists have roundly condemned the new requirement. [...]

Before, potential candidates only needed to sign a declaration to uphold the constitution and pledge allegiance to Hong Kong. Although Article One of the Basic Law states that Hong Kong is an inalienable part of China, “there’s no legal basis for the new requirement,” said Albert Ho, a legislator from the Democratic Party who plans to run for reelection. [...]

Independence so far has made little headway among Hong Kong’s electorate. In an election in February, Leung received only 15% of the vote in losing to a candidate from the pan-Democratic camp who did not advocate independence.

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Los Angeles Times: Judge blocks Mississippi law on objections to gay marriage

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves wrote that the title, text and history of the law show it is "the state's attempt to put LGBT citizens back in their place" in response to last summer's Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage nationwide.

"In physics, every action has its equal and opposite reaction," Reeves wrote. "In politics, every action has its predictable overreaction." [...]

The law sought to protect three beliefs: That marriage is only between a man and a woman; that sex should only take place in such a marriage; and that a person's gender is determined at birth and cannot be altered.

It would allow county clerks to cite religious objections to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and would protect merchants who refuse services to lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people. It could affect adoptions and foster care, business practices and school bathroom policies. [...]

"As a result, Mississippi will no longer be permitted to favor some 'religious beliefs' over others, and the civil rights of LGBT Mississippians will not be subordinated to the religious beliefs of only certain religious groups," said Kaplan, who represents the Campaign for Southern Equality.

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