Humanize From Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism
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California

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City of San Francisco Ca. Downtown business district seen through the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge

2024: The Year “San Francisco Values” Finally Failed


San Francisco was once a conservative city. Oh, sure, it had its bohemian side. The Beats of the ’50s were at home in North Beach, and Harry Bridges, the suspected communist who served for years as head of the longshoremen’s union, had a definite influence. But for the most part, San Francisco was well within the cultural mainstream. Indeed, the city was so staid that the Republican Party’s nominee for mayor won landslides in 1955 and 1959, and the GOP nominated the archconservative Barry Goldwater as its presidential candidate from the Cow Palace in 1964.

Then, San Francisco changed. Radically. In 1964, the University of California, Berkeley, a few miles across the bay, became the center of the “free speech” movement. Civil rights and then militant anti–Vietnam War advocacy found great sympathy. The Haight-Ashbury neighborhood became a hippy haven and the focus of a growing drug culture. The gay-rights movement sprang energetically out of the Castro District, and the once predominately Italian working-class neighborhood was transformed into a radical front of the sexual revolution. By the 1980s, the term “San Francisco values” — wielded by conservatives to describe the cultural and political radicalism of the Bay Area — had turned the city into something of a national joke.

Over the years, policies enacted by the city’s ever more extreme progressive leaders slowly destroyed San Francisco. I lived in and around the city for almost 25 years, starting in 1992, and saw the decline happen in real time. It broke my heart.

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Doctor supporting elderly woman in clinic, closeup

Boosters of Assisted Suicide Want It to Be Much More Common

Doctors killed more than 15,000 people in Canada in 2023. I think that's a terrible toll that should concern even supporters of euthanasia. But in California, some assisted-suicide boosters are upset that a similar number of Californians didn't end their own lives by assisted suicide. In other words, they see Canada's gob-smacking statistics as aspirational. Read More ›
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Public domain image from Wikimedia, by Lawrence Jackson

Science Journal Swoons Over Kamala

These days, scientific and medical journals are seemingly as much ideological — on the left — as scientific. Nature — perhaps the preeminent science journal in the world — has posted a piece swooning over Vice President Kamala Harris as a "historic" presumptive presidential nominee stirring "optimism" among scientists. Why? Read More ›
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Young beautiful teacher woman wearing sweater and glasses sitting on desk at kindergarten asking to be quiet with finger on lips. Silence and secret concept.

New California Law Prohibits Schools from Telling Parents Their Child Is Trans

Political progressives apparently think that school administrators and teachers should have a greater say than parents in the raising and treatment of children experiencing gender dysphoria. How else to explain Governor Gavin Newsom's signing A.B. 1955, an authoritarian law that forces schools to leave parents in the dark if their child identifies as the opposite sex or presents other issues around sexual identity and orientation. Read More ›
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A professional physician in a white medical uniform talks to discuss results or symptoms and gives a recommendation to a male patient and signs a medical paper at an appointment visit in the clinic.

Survey: MDs Support Expanding Assisted Suicide Beyond the Terminally Ill

The myth that legal assisted suicide is about terminal illness is becoming harder to swallow. Evidence can be found in a recent survey of doctors, published in the Journal of Cutaneous Oncology, which asked doctors this question: "In addition to adults with terminal illnesses, [which] other groups of patients who should be MAID eligible?" Read More ›
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A transgender flag being waved at LGBT gay pride march

California Is Waging an Ever-More-Aggressive LGBT Culture War

Two bills currently moving through the California Legislature reveal how committed the state’s progressive political leaders are to imposing legal hegemony favoring LGBT social agendas. Read More ›
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Kitchen waste recycling in composter

Composting the Dead Devalues the Importance of the Living

Starting in 2027, California will allow composting of the dead. Known officially as “natural organic reduction (NOR),” this novel final disposition process transforms the deceased’s body into soil to spread on gardens or in which to plant flowers or a tree. Read More ›
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A transgender flag being waved at LGBT gay pride march

U.K. Transgender Clinic to Close after Damning Report: ‘Not Safe’ for Children

As the Biden administration continues to try to use its regulatory powers to force a “gender-affirming” approach to children who question their sex, in other countries the rubber-stamping of a gender-dysphoric child’s belief and the prescribing of puberty-blocking drugs are under serious reconsideration. The U.K., Sweden, Finland, and France — not exactly Bible Belt countries — are all pulling back from the rush to transition children. Now, in the U.K., the Tavistock Gender Clinic — run by the National Health Service — is being shut down because it is not safe for children. From the Daily Mail story: The NHS‘s controversial child transgender clinic will shut its doors after a damning report found it was ‘not safe’ for children. The gender identity service at Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Read More ›

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California Capitol Building - Sacramento

California’s Proposed Constitutional Amendment Would Guarantee Right to Abortion through Ninth Month

The California legislature has placed a proposal on the November ballot that would elevate and expand the existing legality of abortion to a state constitutional right. Read More ›
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A transgender flag being waved at LGBT gay pride march

California May Soon Become ‘Gender Affirming Care’ Sanctuary State

California looks to be well on the way to passing a bill that would treat refusals to allow puberty blocking, transgender surgeries, or other forms of “gender affirming care” as akin to how the law now treats child abuse and abandonment of children brought from out of state. Read More ›