Russian Don't Ask and Don't Tell (DADT)

MOSCOW –   Almost two-thirds of Russians find homosexuality morally unacceptable and worth condemning. About half are against gay rallies and same-sex marriage, while almost a third think homosexuality is the result of "a sickness or a psychological trauma. These findings are confirmed by opinion poll conducted last year by the respected Levada Centre.
  Some politicians and public figures have accused gay people of contributing to the fall in Russia's already low birth rates, and have argued that they should be barred from government jobs, undergo forced medical treatment or be exiled.
An executive with a government-run television network said on a nationally televised talk show that gay people should be prohibited from donating blood, sperm and organs for transplants, and that their hearts should be burned or buried after death.
 Russia decriminalised homosexuality in 1993, but homophobia remains high in the country. Authorities often ban gay rallies and parades.
Russians  believe that minors need to be protected from "homosexual propaganda" because they are unable to evaluate the information critically. They think that propaganda is spread through the mass media and public events that propagate homosexuality as normal behavior.
Russia's State Duma, the lower house of parliament, voted 388-1-1 for the law that makes public events and the dissemination of information on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, community to minors punishable by fines of up to $16,000 (£10,000). After two readings, the bill was signed by President Vladimir Putin.

 Kissing his boyfriend during a protest in front of Russia's parliament earned Pavel Samburov 30 hours of detention and the equivalent of a $16 fine on a charge of "hooliganism." But such a public kiss is defined as illegal "homosexual propaganda" and could bring a fine of up to $16,000.

Legislation pushed by the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church make it illegal nationwide to provide minors with information that is defined as "propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism." It includes a ban on holding public events that promote homosexual rights. St. Petersburg and a number of other Russian cities already have similar laws on their books.
This is part of an effort to promote traditional Russian values as opposed to Western liberalism, which the Kremlin and church see as corrupting Russian youth and by extension contributing to a wave of protest against President Vladimir Putin's rule.
Samburov describes the anti-gay bill as part of a Kremlin crackdown on minorities of any kind — political and religious as well as sexual — designed to divert public attention from growing discontent with Putin's rule.
The lanky and longhaired Samburov is the founder of the Rainbow Association, which unites homosexual activists throughout Russia.
Other laws that the Kremlin says are intended to protect young Russians have been hastily adopted in recent months, including some that allow banning and blocking web content and print publications that are deemed "extremist" or unfit for young audiences.
Denis Volkov, a sociologist with the Levada Center, an independent pollster, says the anti-gay bill fits the "general logic" of a government intent on limiting various rights.
But in this case, the move has been met mostly with either indifference or open enthusiasm by average Russians. Levada polls conducted last year show that almost two thirds of Russians find homosexuality "morally unacceptable and worth condemning." About half are against gay rallies and same-sex marriage; almost a third think homosexuality is the result of "a sickness or a psychological trauma," the Levada surveys show.
Russia's widespread hostility to homosexuality is shared by the political and religious elite.
Lawmakers have accused homosexuals of decreasing Russia's already low birth rates and said they should be barred from government jobs, undergo forced medical treatment or be exiled. Orthodox activists criticized U.S. company PepsiCo for using a "gay" rainbow on cartons of its dairy products. An executive with a government-run television network said in a nationally televised talk show that gays should be prohibited from donating blood, sperm and organs for transplants, while after death their hearts should be burned or buried.

The gay rights protest that won Samburov a fine took place in December. Seconds after Samburov and his boyfriend kissed, militant activists with the Orthodox Church pelted them with eggs. Police intervened, rounding up the gay activists and keeping them for 30 hours first in a frozen van and then in an unheated detention center. The Orthodox activists were also rounded up, but were released much earlier.
Those behind the law say minors need to be protected from "homosexual propaganda" because they are unable to evaluate the information critically. "This propaganda goes through the mass media and public events that propagate homosexuality as normal behavior," the law reads.
Cities started adopting anti-gay laws in 2006. Only one person has been prosecuted so far under a law specifically targeted at gays: Nikolai Alexeyev, a gay rights campaigner, was fined the equivalent of $160 after a one-man protest last summer in St. Petersburg.
In November, a St. Petersburg court dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Trade Union of Russian Citizens, a small group of Orthodox conservatives and Putin loyalists, against pop star Madonna. The group sought $10.7 million in damages for what it says was "propaganda of perversion" when Madonna spoke up for gay rights during a show three months earlier.
The federal lawcomes 20 years after a Stalinist-era law punishing homosexuality with up to five years in prison was removed from Russia's penal code as part of the democratic reforms that followed the Soviet Union's collapse.
Most of the other former Soviet republics also decriminalized homosexuality, and attitudes toward gays have become a litmus test of democratic freedoms. While gay pride parades are held in the three former Soviet Baltic states, all today members of the European Union, same-sex love remains a crime in authoritarian Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
In Russia, homosexuals have been whipsawed by official pressure and persistent homophobia. There are no reliable estimates of how many gays and lesbians live in Russia, and only a few big cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg have gay nightclubs and gyms. Even there, gays do not feel secure.
When a dozen masked men entered a Moscow night club during a "coming out party" that campaigner Samburov organized in October, he thought they were part of the show. But then one of the masked men yelled, "Have you ordered up a fight? Here you go!" The men overturned tables, smashed dishes and beat, kicked and sprayed mace at the five dozen men and women who had gathered at the gay-friendly Freedays club, Samburov and the club's administration said.
Four club patrons were injured, including a young woman who got broken glass in her eye, police said. Although a police station was nearby, Samburov said, it took police officers half an hour to arrive. The attackers remain unidentified.
On the next day, an Orthodox priest said he regretted that his religious role had not allowed him to participate in the beating.
"Until this scum gets off of Russian land, I fully share the views of those who are trying to purge our motherland of it," Rev. Sergiy Rybko was quoted as saying by the Orthodoxy and World online magazine. "We either become a tolerant Western state where everything is allowed — and lose our Christianity and moral foundations — or we will be a Christian people who live in our God-protected land in purity and godliness."
In other parts of Russia, gays feel even less secure. Bagaudin Abduljalilov moved to Moscow from Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim region in southern Russia where he says some gays have been beaten and had their hands cut off, sometimes by their own relatives, for bringing shame on their families.
"You don't have any human rights down there," he said. "Anything can be done to you with impunity."
Shortly before moving to Moscow, Abduljalilov left Islam to become a Protestant Christian, but was expelled from a seminary after telling the dean he was gay. He also has had trouble finding a job as a television journalist because of discrimination against people from Dagestan.
"I love Russia, but I want another Russia," said Abduljalilov, 30, who now works as a clerk. "It's a pity I can't spend my life on creative projects instead of banging my head against the wall and repeating, 'I'm normal, I'm normal.' "

How Incorrect Can Politically Correct Be?

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has proposed changing the terminology it uses in its regulations and its materials. The SSA proposes changing the term “mental retardation” to “intellectual disability.” The Administration has proposed making these changes because it thinks that its current terms can be offensive to some people and that these terms carry negative connotations.
All references to "mental retardation" are being changed
More than two years ago, Congress required that the term "intellectual disability" be used in place of "mental retardation" in all federal health, education and labor policy. This requirement did not apply to the Social Security Administration, however.
In early 2013, the SSA finally moved to follow the lead of Congress. "Advocates for individuals with intellectual disability have asserted that the term 'mental retardation' has negative connotations, has become offensive to many people, and often results in misunderstandings about the nature of the disorder and those who have it," said the SSA in the proposed rule  (NPRM) published in the Federal Register.
The 30-day public comment period on the proposed rule has just passed, and it looks as though the rule will move forward. When it is finalized, all references to "mental retardation" within the SSA's Listing of Impairments and other rules will be changed to "intellectual disability."

Also, "mentally retarded children" will be replaced with "children with intellectual disability."
The language changes are not meant to alter the way SSD claims are evaluated for individuals with developmental disabilities.

Intellectual disability is just one of many mental issues that can entitle you to Social Security Disability benefits. Depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder are examples of other mental health issues that can lead to a disability finding.

Political correctness, or politically correct (PC) is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts, and, as purported by the term, doing so to an excessive extent.
Widespread use of the term politically correct and its derivatives began when it was adopted as a pejorative term by the political right in the 1990s, in the context of the Culture Wars. Writing in the New York Times in 1990, Richard Bernstein noted "The term 'politically correct,' with its suggestion of Stalinist orthodoxy, is spoken more with irony and disapproval than with reverence. But across the country the term p.c., as it is commonly abbreviated, is being heard more and more in debates over what should be taught at the universities." Bernstein referred to a meeting of the Western Humanities Conference in Berkeley, California, on "'Political Correctness' and Cultural Studies," which examined "what effect the pressure to conform to currently fashionable ideas is having on scholarship". Bernstein also referred to "p.c.p" for "politically correct people," a term which did not take root in popular discussion.
Within a few years, this previously obscure term featured regularly in the lexicon of the conservative social and political challenges against curriculum expansion and progressive teaching methods in US high schools and universities. In 1991, addressing a graduating class of the University of Michigan, U.S. President George H. W. Bush spoke against "a movement [that would] declare certain topics 'off-limits,' certain expressions 'off-limits', even certain gestures 'off-limits'" in allusion to liberal Political Correctness. The most common usage here is as a pejorative term to refer to excessive deference to particular sensibilities at the expense of other considerations. The converse term "politically incorrect" came into use as an implicit term of self-praise, indicating that the user was not afraid to ignore constraints associated with political correctness.
The central uses of the term relate to particular issues of race, gender, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation, culture and worldviews, and encompass both the language in which issues are discussed and the viewpoints that are expressed. Proponents of the view that differences in IQ test scores between ^Blacks and whites are (primarily or largely) genetically determined state that criticism of these views is based on political correctness.
Examples of language commonly referred to as "politically correct" include:

• "Intellectually disabled" in place of "^Mentally Retarded" and other terms
• "Gay" in place of "homosexual" and other terms 
• "Sexually dysfunctional" in place of "perverted" and other terms
• "Sex care provider" in place of "prostitute" and other terms
• "African American" in place of "Black," "Negro" and other terms
• "Native American" (United States)/"First Nations" (Canada) in place of "Indian"
• "Gender-neutral" terms such as "firefighter" in place of "fireman," police officer in place of policeman.
• Terms relating to lack of various common human abilities, such as "visually impaired" or "hearing impaired" in place of "blind" or "deaf"
• "Caucasian culturrally-challenged" in place of "white trash" and other terms
• "Undocumented alien" in place of "illegal immigrant" and other terms
• "Economically unprepared" in place of "poor" and other terms
• "Sanitation engineer" in place of "janitor" or "garbage man" and other terms
• "Near-life experience" in place of "abortion" and other terms
• "Youth group" in place of "gang" and other terms
• "Senior citizen" in place of "old person" and other terms
• "Holiday", "winter" or "festive" in place of "Christmas"

In the United Kingdom, "political correctness gone mad" is a catchphrase associated with the conservative Daily Mail newspaper.
In a more general sense, any policy regarded by the speaker as representing an imposed orthodoxy may be criticized as "politically correct."

Why We Need Illegal immigrants

Billions Earned Under Fake Social Security Numbers Calculate Benefits

One of the ironies of the challenging financial future faced by the Social Security Administration is this seldom-discussed fact: Undocumented workers contribute about $13 billion per year to the Social Security Trust Fund, and only get back a small fraction, adding a bit of black ink to a balance sheet in sore need of a boost. As President Obama mulls whether and when to enact executive orders that would affect the status of up to 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country, these Social Security payments are a proxy of sorts for the potential power of these workers who now stand in the shadows of the economy.
These immigrants are often accused of creating outsize social services costs, but in this important instance the opposite is true. Undocumented workers using fake, invalid, or borrowed Social Security numbers are subject to payroll taxes but usually receive nothing back. The extent of their contributions hints at the vast scale of the underground economy — and at the economic benefits that could be harnessed by giving undocumented workers a legal way to move out of it.
The chief actuary of the Social Security Administration recently told Vice News that, out of the estimated 7 million unauthorized workers currently in the US labor force, about 3 million use either false or expired Social Security numbers. The payroll taxes paid by these unauthorized workers go into the Social Security’s “Earnings Suspense File” — in effect, money without a lawful home. “You could say legitimately that had we not received the contributions that we have had in the past from undocumented immigrants . . . that would of course diminish our ability to be paying benefits for as long as we now can,”. Undocumented immigrants have contributed $100 billion into Social Security over the last decade.

Major immigration reform legislation would provide work authorization and Social Security numbers for an estimated 11 million immigrants working here illegally. But without changes to protect Social Security, illegal workers whose status later changes could become entitled to benefits based on jobs worked under fake and invalid Social Security numbers. Social Security could be on the hook for hundreds of billions in new liabilities according to a new  research report based on data from the Social Security Administration.
Unauthorized immigrants getting jobs show employers false or invalid Social Security numbers. When the Social Security Administration receives copies of W2s in which the name and Social Security do not match those on Social Security’s records, they go into the Earnings Suspense File (ESF). The W2s remain on file until the earnings can be reconciled with the real worker, even if that occurs years later. Since 2000, the Social Security Administration has received about 9.3 million such W2s per year on average, representing more than $69.4 billion per year in earnings.
The earnings reported to the ESF over the past 11 years now total more than $763.5 billion, unadjusted for inflation. “Those earnings are important, because that’s what the Social Security Administration uses to determine entitlement and initial benefit amounts — not the amount of taxes paid in,” .
Although Social Security is aware of the problem, no government estimates of the potential future cost of benefits based on work under fake Social Security numbers exist.
Immigration advocates say that the taxes on earnings worked under invalid Social Security numbers help boost Social Security’s financing and that workers would have little chance of collecting benefits. “But that would change under immigration reform that provides work authorization”. “Work authorization and a valid Social Security number are the two requirements that would allow former unauthorized workers to file a claim for benefits.”
That could have significant implications for future Social Security costs because, under current law, the fraudulent use of Social Security numbers to gain employment is not penalized. “One would think that the earnings under fake Social Security numbers would not be used to calculate Social Security benefits. But to the contrary, under current policies, those earnings can be reinstated — no questions asked”.
Social Security uses all earnings to determine entitlement even for jobs worked under fake Social Security numbers. If workers have kept evidence of earnings, like copies of their W2s, tax return earnings under invalid Social Security numbers would be reinstated to the new valid number.
“Congress is considering Social Security changes that would cut the benefits of U.S. citizens and authorized workers who paid into the system under valid Social Security numbers”. “Yet our current polices reward people for the use of fraudulent Social Security numbers, undermining the financial solvency of the program”.