The eHarmony Shakedown

by Michelle Malkin
Friday, 21 November, 2008 -- Townhall.com

Congratulations, tolerance mau-mauers: Your shakedown of a Christian-targeted dating website worked. Homosexuals will no longer be denied the inalienable "right" to hook up with same-sex partners on eHarmony. What a landmark triumph for social progress, eh?

New Jersey plaintiff Eric McKinley can now crown himself the new Rosa Parks -- heroically breaking down inhumane barriers to Internet matchmaking by forcing a law-abiding private company to provide services it was never created to provide. "Men seeking men" has now been enshrined with "I have a dream" as a civil rights rallying cry of the 21st century. Bully for you, Mr. McKinley. You bully.

Neil Warren, eHarmony's founder, is a gentle, grandfatherly businessman who launched his popular dating site to support heterosexual marriage. A "Focus on the Family" author with a divinity degree, Warren encourages healthy, lasting unions between men and women of all faiths, mixed faiths or no faith at all.

Don't like what eHarmony sells? Go somewhere else. There are thousands upon thousands of dating sites on the Internet that cater to gays, lesbians, Jews, Muslims, Trekkies, runners, you name it.

No matter. In the name of tolerance, McKinley refused to tolerate eHarmony's right to operate a lawful business that didn't give him what he wanted. He filed a discrimination complaint against eHarmony with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights in 2005.

To be clear: eHarmony never, ever refused to do business with anyone. The company broke no laws. Their great "sin" was not providing a politically correct service that a publicity-seeking gay plaintiff demanded they provide. For three years, the company battled McKinley's legal shakedown artists -- and staved off other opportunists as well. The dating site had been previously sued by a lesbian looking to force the company to match her up with another woman, and by a married man who ridiculously sought to force the company to find him prospects for an adulterous relationship.

This case is akin to a meat-eater suing a vegetarian restaurant for not offering him a rib-eye, or a female patient suing a vasectomy doctor for not providing her hysterectomy services. But rather than defend the persecuted business, the New Jersey attorney general intervened on behalf of the gay plaintiff and wrangled an agreement out of eHarmony to change its entire business model.

The company agreed not only to offer same-sex dating services on a new site, but also to offer six-month subscriptions for free to 10,000 gay users, pay McKinley $5,000 and fork over $50,000 to New Jersey's Civil Rights division "to cover investigation-related administrative costs." Oh, and that's not all. Yield, yield to the grievance-mongers:

Additional terms of the settlement include:

-- eHarmony, Inc. will post photos of same-sex couples in the "Diversity" section of its website as successful relationships are created using the company's same-sex matching service. In addition, eHarmony, Inc. will include photos of same-sex couples, as well as individual same-sex users, in advertising materials used to promote its same-sex matching services;

-- eHarmony, Inc. will revise anti-discrimination statements placed on company websites, in company handbooks and other company publications to make plain that it does not discriminate on the basis of "sexual orientation";

-- the company has committed to advertising and public relations/ marketing dedicated to its same-sex matching service, and will retain a media consultant experienced in promoting the "fair, accurate and inclusive" representation of gay and lesbian people in the media to determine the most effective way of reaching the gay and lesbian communities.

I have enormous sympathy for eHarmony, whose attorney explained that they gave in to the unfair settlement because "litigation outcomes can be unpredictable." The recent mob response to the passage of Proposition 8, the traditional marriage measure in California, must have also weighed on eHarmony management's minds. But capitulation will only yield a worse, entirely predictable outcome: more shakedowns of private businesses that hold views deemed unacceptable by the Equality-at-All-Costs Brigade.

Perhaps heterosexual men and women should start filing lawsuits against gay dating websites and undermine their businesses. Coerced tolerance and diversity-by-fiat cut both ways.

Priest loses custody of triplets fathered by donating sperm - accused of abusing those children

By Carolyn Peirce
Examiner Staff Writer 10/30/08

A Catholic priest found to have sexually abused two of his 6-year-old triplets lost custody this week to the woman who gave birth to the children using his donated sperm and another woman’s eggs.

The state’s second-highest court held Monday that Fernando Cristancho, 52, of Bel Air, is unfit to parent the triplets, two boys and a girl, and granted custody to Dalia Fernandez, 57, the woman who gave birth to them using in vitro fertilization.

The decision affirmed the ruling of Harford Circuit Judge Emory Plitt Jr., who said Fernandez deserved the children because she was a de facto parent acting as their mother even though she was unrelated.

Plitt’s decision had been called into question when the state’s highest court ruled against the de facto parent doctrine in another case during Cristancho’s appeal, saying only extreme circumstances overrule a parent’s right to custody.

“One of the constitutionally protected rights is for a parent to have say with regard to [the custody of] their children and to overcome that, you have to show some sort of unfitness by the parent,” said J. Richard Moore III, Fernandez’s trial attorney who is now a master in Harford. Masters make recommendations in family and juvenile cases that are sent to judges who make the final decision.

Moore said the intermediate appellate court upheld Plitt’s ruling because the sexual abuse was proof enough that Cristancho was unfit, even if the de facto parent doctrine was tossed.

“Plitt took into account that the court might rule in that fashion,” Moore said. “So, he also found that Cristancho was unfit ... and basically made the opinion bulletproof.”

Cristancho’s’ attorney Laura Bearsch said the appeal was based on discrepancies in what the boys reported and a Department of Social Services investigation that was “really, really full of errors.”

Bearsch said the boys were never interviewed alone, and authorities were “picking and choosing” what to believe. Cristancho never was criminally charged with sex abuse, she said.

According to Monday’s opinion, Cristancho asked his Platonic friend Fernandez to travel with him to Colombia in 2001 and undergo the in vitro process, because he had taken a vow of celibacy.

Church officials learned of the children’s birth in November and fired Cristancho from his position as assistant priest at St. Ignatius Church in Forest Hill. His relationship with Fernandez soon dwindled.

According to the opinion, one of the boys disclosed the sexual abuse in 2005, but the family’s doctor told Fernandez that police wouldn’t believe the boy because of his age.

When the boy told the same story in 2006 to a baby sitter, police were notified along with the Archdiocese of Baltimore and the Department of Social Services.

Cristancho also was accused in 1997 of sexual misconduct with a young woman who wasn’t a minor, for which he was fired from the Parish Council at Good Shepherd Church in Alexandria, Va., according to the opinion.

cpeirce@baltimoreexaminer.com

Boeing Talks With Striking Machinists Break Down

SEATTLE — (AP)  Boeing Co. and the leader of its striking machinists union say talks aimed at resolving a five-week walkout have broken down.

Boeing chief negotiator Doug Kight said the company was disappointed as talks broke off late Monday afternoon. The walkout is in its 38th day.

The president of the Machinists Union, Tom Buffenbarger, said by phone that the talks broke down over "the future" but declined to provide specifics.

Talks between the two parties resumed Sunday for the first time since 27,000 machinists went on strike Sept. 6 over issues that include job security, pay, retirement benefits and health care. The union also has concerns about provisions on outsourcing and subcontracting.

Boeing's Kight says the company wants its commercial jet production workers back at work but can't "sacrifice our ability to continuously improve productivity and our long-term competitiveness."

Gov. Sarah Palin Biography Video

The Cindy McCain Story

Newt Gingrich Slams Reporter Ron Allen About Sarah Palin

MSNBC reporter Ron Allen asks Newt Gingrich:

"But to be fair, her resume is not something we're familiar seeing with presidential candidates."

Gingrich blows him away with a hot rebuttal.

Where To Go On Holiday In South Africa...

South Africa lies at the southernmost tip of Africa, between the
Indian and Atlantic oceans with 3500 kilometers (about 2200 miles) of
shoreline providing unlimited opportunities to explore and with a
diverse mix of cultures that includes British, Dutch, German, French,
Indian, Portuguese and Muslim. The two confirmed languages are English
and Afrikaans (a mix of Dutch and German), with 11 ethnic languages
spoken. This will maybe give you some understanding of why South
Africa's people are called the rainbow nation...

Powered by ScribeFire.

PREVIEW: Google Android OS

HTC Dream...!!!

Google Android OS demo.

Dear Mr. Obama

An Iraq Veteran has a personal message for Barack Obama.

Remarks by Gov. Sarah Palin

The Speech!!!

Producing American Energy and Opening ANWR

Congressman Don Young of Alaska, urges the opening of ANWR and the development of American Energy Sources. His bill, HR 6107, the American Energy Independence and Price Reduction Act, would open ANWR and use the approximately $200 billion in federal revenue generated to develop Alternative Energy sources. How much longer can we afford to wait...?

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is a National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska. It consists of 19,049,236 acres (7,708,952 ha) in the Alaska North Slope region.

Convention Night

Debra

Democrats Praising McCain

A little bit on Governor Palin...

McCain * Palin

Yeah, that's the ticket!!!

Why can't they fix the Flash/Firefox bug?

by Rafe Needleman

Latest: Adobe's John Dowdell has a thoughtful critique of this post that also expands on the nature of the bug.

An annoying and long-lived bug is preventing some users from viewing Web videos. There's a workaround, but for many, the cure is as bad as the disease.

The bug is that Flash videos don't play for certain Firefox 3 users on Windows XP or Vista, when using the current Flash player version 9. On YouTube, CNET TV, and other sites, embedded videos will start, but they halt after two seconds. Both Mozilla and Adobe have been aware of the issue since late May, but as yet no solution has been found. For some people suffering from this bug, it's intermittent. For others, it's a consistent block to viewing online videos.

One workaround solution is to install the Flash 10 player, which is still in beta. Unfortunately, many Flash video sites don't recognize that Flash 10 is a valid and current player. CNN, for example, thinks Flash 10 beta is older than Flash 8, asks users to upgrade to Flash 9, and thus won't play at all.

Since the bug is serious and has been known for some time, I called both Mozilla and Adobe to see what's going on. I spoke first with Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's "phenomenologist," aka head of user experience. He pointed me to the record in Bugzilla where they're tracking the issue and gave me some of the issues they think are responsible for this one. In a nutshell, Mozilla thinks there's a miscommunication between plug-in and browser but doesn't know which product is the culprit.

He also took a minute to trumpet Mozilla's open-source philosophy. Since Firefox's code is open, Adobe can look at it to try to determine what is going on. But Mozilla's team can't look into Flash. Beltzner didn't blame Adobe for the bug itself, but he did say that Adobe's traditional closed software architecture is slowing down their investigation. "We hit a wall when it's a closed-source solution," he said.

An Adobe spokesperson, who asked not to be named, said Adobe is looking into the issue but isn't yet sure if the problem is isolated to Firefox 3 and Flash 9, or if there is a third culprit--another plug-in, perhaps--that is throwing things off for the Flash player.

Finger pointing is common in software troubleshooting, and I give both Mozilla and Adobe credit for only generally waving, not pointing, their fingers at each other. Unfortunately, neither team seems to have developers who can reproduce this issue, which just keeps the ping-pong game going.

What I find most interesting is the way the differing philosophies of Mozilla and Adobe are slowing down resolution of this issue. If both companies were open then any developer--at Mozilla, Adobe, or elsewhere--could get into things and start experimenting to find a fix. If both companies had closed philosophies then their engineers could swear each other to the secrecy, swap source code, and together fix the issue. But right now I get the sense that the two very different companies simply are not meshing well. And because of that, I can't play my videos.

Flash 9 works just fine in Internet Explorer.

See also: Two quick fixes for Firefox 3.

Die Stem van Suid Afrika, The Call of South Africa

Performed by the choir and symphony orchestra of South African Radio, SABC.

The first verse of Die Stem is sung in Afrikaans, followed by the first verse of The Call of South Africa, sung in English. The words have been added to allow people to learn the anthems.

Die Stem was learned by all growing up in South Africa before 1994. It will always be memorable and it will take its place in history. It was continually sung during school assemblies giving South Africans a strong national identity.

English kids in South Africa at the time had their own preferences, Afrikaans version or the English one.

The New South Africa National Anthem

Since 1997, The South African national anthem has been a hybrid song combining new English lyrics with extracts of the hymn "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" and the former anthem "Die Stem van Suid-Afrika/The Call of South Africa". It is the only neo-modal national anthem in the world, by virtue of being the only one that does not finish in the home key. The lyrics employ the five most populous of South Africa's eleven official languages - Xhosa (first stanza, first two lines), Zulu (first stanza, last two lines), Sesotho (second stanza), Afrikaans (third stanza) and English (final stanza).

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika was composed in 1897 by Enoch Sontonga, a Methodist school teacher. It was originally sung as a church hymn but later became an act of political defiance against the apartheid government. Die Stem van Suid-Afrika is a poem written by C.J. Langenhoven in 1918 and was set to music by the Reverend Marthinus Lourens de Villiers in 1921. Die Stem was the co-national anthem with God Save the King/Queen from 1936 to 1957, when it became the sole national anthem until 1995. The South African government under Nelson Mandela adopted both songs as national anthems from 1995 until they were merged in 1997 to form the current anthem.

Old Sugar Mill, Maui, Hawaii, USA

Nice tour of an old Sugar Mill on Maui.

Juanita du Plessis - Ons koning kom

Music video contains footage of the Mighty Men conference and Loftus for Jesus.

President Reagan's Humour

What can I say, except that I really do miss him!

Juanita du Plessis - Mengelmoeskardoes

What the heck... I like her, so here's another!

E*TRADE Mobile Baby 2008

Hey girl, can I hit you back?!!!

Juanita du Plessis - Vlieg Hoog

Juanita's music is a big inspiration for many people! This surely is one of the biggest gospel songs ever written in South Africa! She's totally HOT too!!!

Juanita du Plessis - Patayo

Man she's hot!!! Get her Music CD's and Video's at Kalahari.net.

Freedom Never Cries

Freedom is not free...

Hot Fuzz - Cinema Trailer

You've gotta see it!!! What a terrifically hilarious action film. An incredibly funny, witty, intelligent British comedy that manages to bring you to tears with laughter and also offers extremely well directed and executed action scenes! Truly excellent.

Nicholas Angel is the finest cop London has to offer, with an arrest record 400% higher than any other officer on the force. He's so good, he makes everyone else look bad. As a result, Angel's superiors send him to a place where his talents won't be quite so embarrassing - the sleepy and seemingly crime-free village of Sandford.

Once there, he is partnered with the well-meaning but overeager police officer Danny Butterman. The son of amiable Police Chief Frank Butterman, Danny is a huge action movie fan and believes his new big-city partner might just be a real-life "bad boy," and his chance to experience the life of gunfights and car chases he so longs for.

Angel is quick to dismiss this as childish fantasy and Danny's puppy-like enthusiasm only adds to Angel's growing frustration. However, as a series of grisly accidents rocks the village, Angel is convinced that Sandford is not what it seems and as the intrigue deepens, Danny's dreams of explosive, high-octane, car-chasing, gunfighting, all-out action seem more and more like a reality. It's time for these small-town cops to break out some big-city justice.

Check it out on DVD, or look for it On-Demand.

Google Android OS for mobile telephones

Your mobile will operate like this very soon!!! The Android demo/presentation by Steve Horowitz, Engineering Director, Google.