For the homobigots out there who are worried about the downfall of marriage if gays and lesbians are allowed to partake in it, let this be an example of how mundane and committed married life can be for some of us working hard on The Homosexual Agenda.
My lovely wife Kate and I decided, instead of eating babies and participating in an orgy, to spend Friday night cleaning out the pantry and fridge of outdated and spoiled food.
It was a revelation of sorts, with various “science projects” in the fridge, and long-outdated canned goods in the pantry. And some of the dates were frightening.
Some of the fun discoveries in the fridge:
Moldy green Sargento swiss cheese
Ziploc bag containing two boxes of leftover Chinese food, one had leaked through and discolored the box
Rubbermaid plastic container with what looked like was a half of an onion at some point.
Jar way in the back with one dill pickle floating in its water
Deli drawer with various opened packages of deli meats at least a month old.
Apples that have been in there at least 2 months at least and do not look spoiled (that seems unnatural, no?)
Applesauce that was ancient and still didn’t look spoiled (scary)
Various discolored, freezer-burned meats that we didn’t Foodsaver
Some treasures in the pantry:
Three cans of Healthy Choice soups with expiration dates of 9/2009 and 7/2008(!).
Can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup (that one I’m blaming on Kate), date: 7/2006(!)
Cans of corn dated 8/2009
Open boxes of pasta and rice, who knows how old.
Open box of Lorna Doones
Open bag of Original Goldfish crackers from June
And that was our deviant Friday night of marital bliss, Maggie, Brian, and the rest of you homo-haters out there.
Feel free to share your pantry and fridge purge nightmares in the comments, or tell us about your progressive Friday perversions that should scare the fundies.
..."Conservative" icon Glenn Beck, in a conversation with Bill O’Reilly, said basically he doesn’t care about the attack on traditional marriage. Asked if the California ruling will harm the country in any way, he responded: “No I don’t. Will the gays come and get us? I believe that Thomas Jefferson said: ‘If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket what difference is it to me?’”
Rush Limbaugh, the iconic leader of American conservatism, hired the noted homosexual singer Elton John to perform at his wedding. He has not aired one of his bitingly satirical “gay community updates” in years.
“Conservatives,” it seems, are on the verge of not only accepting homosexuality’s domination of the culture, but embracing it.
Count Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck as the latest deserters in the culture war and in the battle for sexual normalcy. They have flinched at “precisely that little point which the world and the devil are … attacking,” and so have forfeited the right to consider themselves any longer culture warriors.
Let’s be clear: Endorsing homosexual behavior is not a conservative position, period. Supporting special rights based on aberrant sexual behavior is not conservative, period. Supporting either civil unions or marriages based entirely on using the alimentary canal for sexual purposes is not conservative, period.
You [Ann Coulter] will be received with a standing ovation [at HOMOCON] for pandering to a group that wants to put open homosexuals in the same showers and barracks with sexually normal soldiers (priority No. 4) and is fiercely opposed to any attempt to elevate protection for natural marriage to the Constitution (priority No. 7 – see GOProud website).
...Glenn Beck has completely and shamelessly surrendered on the issue of gay marriage, and did so on Bill O’Reilly’s program, only the most-watched cable news program in all TV land...Even O’Reilly, who is a notorious squish on the subject of the acceptability of homosexual behavior, was taken aback by Beck’s capitulation and rightly accused him of “ignoring the profound change in the American family.”
Folks, we are starting to see real damage to core of the professional homo-hate machine. The fiscal conservative/libertarian lite wing of the GOP, as well as those like Beck and Coulter, who depended on that demo for their meal ticket in the past, sees the legal handwriting on the wall for the social conservatives (aka loonies) and are publicly making a break for the door to more credibility), with the alignment now toward the burgeoning Tea Party wing.
It’s pretty clear that a corner has been turned, with the green light foor Beck and Coulter likely being the 138-page Prop 8 legal ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker that decimated the pathetic case presented by the defenders of marriage discrimination. The sorry-ass, religious, culture, and bias-based excuses to prevent opening civil marriage to lesbians and gays couldn’t stand up to the reality-based legal standard, as Olsen and Boies smacked down the so-called “experts” who bothered to show up to testify. Just a peek at Walker’s Findings of Fact alone put those ridiculous arguments completely to bed.
Beck and Coulter, who are thinking about their professional bottom lines, are placing their bets on the legal wind blowing away from the bible-beating theocrat wing of conservatism.
Again, while I can’t always agree with their political positions on issues, credit also has to go to GOProud, which has managed to become a deeply lodged splinter into the social conservative movement in a very short time (the LCR was never this effective). It was first an irritation, and now it’s making the bible-beaters hurt badly if they are taking this infighting public over HOMOCON. Makes we wish I could get up there to cover the event, which is on September 25 in NYC.
“I strongly encourage Mr LaBarbera to head out to his local bookstore, buy an Ann Coulter book and actually read it. For a guy who claims to be a “fan,” he seems completely clueless about what Ann has actually written and said about gay people and gay conservatives.
If Mr. LaBarbera spent less time obsessing about gay sex and hanging out at gay Pride events, maybe he would have a little more time to read one of Ann’s books.”
Freedom is irrelevant. Assimilation is inevitable. Resistance is futile.
Yes, it’s pretty funny that the Family Research Council continues to believe that The Homosexual Agenda is all-powerful and all-consuming—a steamroller of epic proportions, crushing all Christianity out of our culture by our stealthiness and our balls-out aggression (remember, lesbians don’t exist).
Read the crazy-*ss paranoia of FRC blogger Cynthia Hill, who believes that the success of Victory Fund candidates on June 8th signals armageddon for America.
Americans should take a cold, hard look at the consequences of significant wins by openly lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) candidates in last night’s races. This is the fruition of that community’s methodical efforts to further homosexualize America. Their efforts, combined with this administration’s appointments of key federal positions of at least 101 LGBT aficionados, have largely been under the radar, but could predict critical damage to our rule of law. Think of it – we are electing people who ultimately see the Christian world view as the single, final barrier to their ultimate goal of acceptance and implementation of the homosexual agenda. If and when they dominate the legislatures, those who espouse Biblical principles then become the enemy and will surely be on the wrong end of law-making.
Um, does somebody have some domination fantasies maybe? Anyway, it’s always drama with these people–the “final barrier” to their “ultimate goal” of dominating the legislatures!
Reality check: There are about 7,000 state lawmakers in the U.S., and about 80 of them are openly gay or lesbian or bisexual–about 1% of the total. So chill out, Cynthia Hill. You’ll be fine. For now.
Yes, you saw right. That’s an attack ad on a Republican politician based around his supposedly repugnant grasp on reality. (Hat tip.) Better yet, it’s a smug attack ad. The sneering attitude towards the theory of evolution is offensive because really, you shouldn’t get to sneer like that unless you’ve earned it by devoting yourself to grasping reality. If you’re really going to embrace your idiocy to the degree that you’re a petulant brat who rejects something as solidly evidence-based as evolution in favor of a bunch of ancient writings that you probably don’t read but imagine fit your fantasies perfectly, at least have the common decency not to be smug about it. I do believe the proper pose for the willfully ignorant is the, “Aw shucks, I’m just a dumbass redneck who can’t be bothered to read those fancy books or believe those educated scientists, but I sure can spit a wad of chewing tobacco clear over my gun rack and my Bible and straight into a spitoon, and that’s gotta count for something.” Seriously, nothing is less charming than not only being willfully ignorant, but acting like anyone who actually knows something about something is an object of contempt. You may believe it, but a little faux humility about your own idiocy makes it an easier sell.
I’m beginning to think this whole “only liberals ‘believe’ in evolution” thing is a little like a fraternity or gang initiation that involves humiliation and/or violence. Denying an obvious and settled reality is a way of demonstrating loyalty by going all-in. You demonstrate that you’re so loyal to the conservative cause you don’t care what kind of jackass you look like to everyone else, or how big a shitpile of stupid you have to swallow. Of course, the only remaining question is why someone would be so eager to show their loyalty to the wingnut tribe. The rewards seem mainly centered around being an asshole, which is something you get to do for free in the real world without having to pay the price of believing some walloping load of horseshit.
My first question upon reading about how non-nutbar home schoolers are having trouble getting decent science books for their kids is this: Why are you giving a single dime to the Christian right? How could you not know that when you buy a science textbook from a “Christian” publisher, it’s going to be a diatribe against the theory of evolution?
That a whole market for home schooling textbooks exists isn’t surprising in the slightest, of course. 83% of home schoolers report that they pulled their kids out of school to give them “religious or moral” instruction, i.e. that they’re fanatical Christians who want to exert firm control over their children until they’re sure that they’re brainwashed enough that they won’t stray from the path. (That this system ensures that wives have no interests or time outside of the family is just a bonus.) What’s going on with the other 17% is probably a grab bag of stuff---bad school districts (or the perception of that), resentment towards the training-you-to-be-compliant aspects of public education, general hippiness---but what I find interesting and sometimes amusing about the other home schoolers is that they seem, to outsiders, way too interested in looking at the religious wackos with a forgiving eye. Is it just that fundies so dominate home schooling that the everyone else home schoolers feel they either create those alliances or languish in loneliness?
I’m surprised they found a woman who was willing to go on the record with a story about how she bought a biology textbook from Bob Jones University, and was shocked and appalled that it denied the reality of evolution. And in a proper twee flourish, gave her small child all the credit for catching the error, as if the child was somehow so brilliant she was born knowing the theory of evolution. I’m surprised, because I’d be too humiliated by this mistake to talk about it, especially if I was interested in selling the idea that I was all my child needs in terms of pre-university instruction, since admitting to that kind of mistake really undermines your credibility. Adding the detail that implies that you might have missed it if it weren’t for your child’s intervention doesn’t help matters. I realize the woman is just participating in that common but annoying cultural trope of, “Me? I’m just a mom, nothing special. Except that I produced these brilliant offspring!”, but still. It’s a little over the top.
Part of me wishes that fundie home schoolers found that raising children to deny basic reality will have a long-term detriment to those kids’ futures, but unfortunately, going to public school is no guard against believing that everything out of your limited understanding must be magic. And so having one more magical belief doesn’t really make much difference in our society. We are all swirling down the drain of ignorance about science. Take for instance, the appallingly magical view a lot of young people have about contraception. Honestly, estimating that the pill fails half the time is straight up magical thinking, assuming that the pill works like wishes and superstitions, which probably work out half the time on average because most wishes and superstitions are addressing a binary situation that involves chance. (Like what team is going to win in tonight’s big game.) It may not feel like magical thinking---I’m sure there’s a haphazard line of made-up reasoning to explain where they got this idea---but that’s what it is. Even a rudimentary understanding of human biology would go a long way to helping people understand things like how contraception works. (I’m not trying to dog on anyone here; I know a lot of smart people who haven’t managed to get past the incorrect idea that the pill “tricks” your body into thinking it’s pregnant. It actually just maintains your hormones at a level that isn’t the one required to ovulate.) Fundies are just pushing us further down the path we were already on, where scientific ignorance is normal and practically expected.
So I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on home schoolers who get duped by these textbooks. I think a lot of people defend evolutionary theory for the wrong reasons---not because they understand it, but because they (correctly) perceive the pro-ignorance, patriarchal bent of fundamentalists who oppose evolutionary theory. But you definitely see really smart people buy into incorrect tropes about science that are ones that the fundies are promoting. For instance, the concept of “Darwinism”, as if Darwin created a religion or ideology that people “believe” in. But that’s not how scientific theories work. Darwin is an interesting historical figure, but the theory itself has morphed and expanded and diversified and dare I say evolved. But most people struggle with understanding how a scientist criticizing one aspect of natural selection as an all-encompassing theory isn’t actually trying to bring down the whole thing like a house of cards. As such, we’re in a poor position to defend ourselves and science, even if we mean well.
A group of self-appointed moral guardians decides that there’s a cancer on society that only they really understand. People are “killing babies”! Obviously, killing “babies” is so wrong that extreme methods are justifiable, right? Such as showing up at clinics and harassing the customers and employees, and playing innocent when one of yours is emboldened to commit an act of terrorism. But society basically tolerates this horrible behavior, while laying down a few lines that legally can’t be crossed (though often are), because the harassers are so sincere. They love babies. And let’s face it: who wants to stand up for abortion? Everyone will think you’re a witchslut morally insufficient person or something like that. Let’s just all pretend the antis are a little dim and that makes them think there’s wee little babies in there, and not that this is some kind of terrorist-style assault on women’s liberation and sexual freedom.
Or not. I’ve made it clear that I agree with what Ellen Willis wrote in 1980 about the anti-choice movement:
I believe---and in saying this I intend no hyperbole whatsoever---that it is the cutting edge of neo-fascism, a threat not only to women’s rights and to everyone’s sexual freedom and privacy but to freedom of religion and civil liberties in general.
Turns out she was right. Because this group that’s terrorizing Amarillo, TX is using anti-choice tactics, but they aren’t even pretending that this is about “life” or any other cover story anti-choicers engage in. They’re the sex police, and they’re going to make your life a living hell if you don’t obey the sex rules they made for you. Which are, as you can imagine, very strict.
The group is Repent Amarillo, and they are very evocative of the Taliban---mostly young men who sport military drag to shore up their masculinity (though obviously they’re too busy screaming at fornicators to do things like actually join the military). I have racked my brain and I cannot understand why it is that this sort of thing happens, that young men can get so thwarted and hateful towards any and all expressions of freedom and sensual pleasure. This group focuses on sex, but if they were given power, I have no doubt they’d expand like the Taliban did into stomping out music, kite-flying, anything that could give human beings a moment of joy. In this case, an older man who is a leader’s motivations are easy enough to understand:
“I was a sexual sinner before I got saved. I got saved seven years ago. Prior to that–yeah, I’ve been to strip joints and porn shops. I’ve done all kinds of things,” he says. “We understand the destructive power of sin firsthand. We’ve lived it. We’ve walked in those shoes.”
I don’t know about the calling her “John” thing---according Andi, all the info they have appears to be that the little girl is dressing like a tomboy---but even if they are letting her call herself by another name, I have to point out that a lot of little kids go through that phase. My sister insisted for something like two months that we call her “Michelle” when she was around this age. But apparently, the entire story is hyperventilating gender panic. Andi discovers that Life & Style is using Focus on the Family as expert testimony now:
Says FotF’s Glenn Stanton, “Little girls have never been women before. They need help, they need guidance of what that looks like.”
I had always thought of the baby bump-watching, wedding-slobbering tabloids as patriarchy propaganda, so I suppose moving into hyperventilating hyper-reactionary crap is the next step.
But what’s really interesting to me is that social conservatives want to have it both ways---they argue both that gender is innate and unchangeable, and that it’s learned. When feminists criticize domestic sexism, conservatives are all about how gender roles are natural and fixed---and in complete opposition to each other. That men are naturally boorish pigs and women are naturally nurturing, so women who resent being told to nurture people who can’t even be expected to show gratitude are bucking nature and need to learn to live with our debased roles. But then they turn around and say things like Stanton did, which is basically to admit that femininity (they also believe this about masculinity) is a learned behavior, and not only that, but it’s a long, hard process learning your gender. You’ll hear from conservatives that boys are naturally drawn to trains and girls to dolls, and then they’ll flip around and tell each other that it’s extremely important to steer your children towards the “right” gender roles.
Their homophobia is clashing with their sexism, and showing how intellectually bankrupt both positions are. Social conservatives portray homosexuality as a “choice"---which makes sense. They want gays to get in the closet, and they’re just portraying that as authentic heterosexuality. But in order to argue that it’s a choice, you have to position homosexuality as a serious temptation and gays as simply very weak people who give in. If you buy into that argument, then you start to see homosexuality as a temptation that preys on all people, and your job as a parent becomes about shoring your child up to resist that temptation. Focus on the Family has long taught its followers that homosexuality can be warded off with strict teaching of gender roles. In other words, they’ve been forced to make explicit what they’ve always pretended wasn’t true, which is that gender roles are learned and performed. The irony is that the one avenue where they’ll admit gender roles are learned is the one avenue where they’re not actually going to have as much influence as they think. Forcing a little girl who wants to be a tomboy into dresses is not going to make her not be a lesbian, and also that many lesbians prefer to present a feminine manner to the world. And a lot of little girls allowed to be tomboys grow up straight.
It’s fascinating, because this contradiction social conservatives carry around---where they claim gender roles are natural while expending tons of effort into teaching them---usually goes completely unacknowledged. Despite the fact that publishing especially makes unbelievable amounts of money teaching gender, from women’s magazines to dating manuals, people love to front like men and women’s roles are inborn (and heterosexual). I suppose open acceptance of homosexuality has thrown a wrench into the works, because it suggests perfectly healthy people can reject assigned gender roles, even when it comes to something as fundamental to mandatory gender roles as who you sleep with.
The American Family Association, run by the elderly Don Wildmon and heir to the bigotry throne Tim, has moved into 21st century gay-bashing, with its blog Focal Point. It’s a poorly designed attempt to pull in some younger anti-gay sheep to fleece, but it still turns out drivel that is completely batsh*t.
The homosexual agenda represents a clear and present danger to virtually every fundamental right given to us by our Creator and enshrined for us in our Constitution.
Start with freedom of religion and freedom of speech, the first two of our inalienable rights secured for us in the Bill of Rights.
As a culture, we must choose between the homosexual agenda or the Constitution because we can’t have both.
Further proof comes from the abjectly pathetic decision of the chaplains’ office at Andrews Air Force Base to rescind a long-standing invitation to Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council. Perkins had been invited to give a non-political talk at a prayer luncheon on the base yesterday, but was abruptly dis-invited for one simple reason: he supports the current law which makes homosexuals ineligible for service in the United States military.
Does anyone here feel like a clear and present danger as you step out to by a gallon of milk? Are people around sensing the carnage you represent to their rights? Apparently Fischer has some sort of insight on how everything is going to go to hell in a handbasket when DADT is repealed. The melodramatic presentation and imagery here are so over the top, I’d like to see this essay faxed to Sen. John McCain, who is still clinging desperately to his belief that DADT is working. Is it at all embarrassing to be on the side of extremists Elaine “flow chart” Donnelly and Fischer? Christianity in the military is under attack.
The days of Dred Scott have returned. Christians now are the ones are being confined on the plantation, and warned about being too uppity.
The only ones who will feel “included” here are those who support sexual deviancy in the military. The rest of you Neanderthals, well, that’s just too bad. This is the new military, regardless of what the law says, so get used to it.
McCarthyism has now struck the U.S. military with a vengeance. The question now that the military is asking is this: ”Are you now, or have you ever been, a supporter of traditional morality?” If the answer is yes, you go on our blacklist, and we deprive you of your freedom of religion, speech and military service.
The implications for national security, especially for recruitment and retention, are sobering. As gays come roaring out of the military’s closet with fangs bared, they will be sending heterosexuals to the brig if they won’t keep their opinions to themselves. Who wants to serve in a military like that?
Let’s start with the good news before going right to the crazy.
Benjamin Todd Jealous, the president and CEO of the NAACP has named Van Jones as a recipient of the civil rights organization’s highest NAACP Image Award for 2010—The President’s Award.
Van Jones is an American treasure.
He is quite simply one of the few Americans in recent years to have generated powerful new ideas that are creating more jobs here.
He wrote the national bestseller, “The Green Collar Economy,” which provided the definitive blueprint for retooling American industry to create pathways out of poverty and generate a national economic recovery. He was a driving force behind passage of the 2007 Green Jobs Act. In fact, Van’s ideas have helped lead to the creation of tens of thousands of jobs across the industrial Midwest and throughout the nation’s decaying urban and rural areas.
Van Jones also may be the most misunderstood man in America.
He resigned from the White House last year after some sought to discredit him for missteps, such as political statements made years ago. However, we can never afford to forget that a defining trait of our country is our collective capacity to practice forgiveness and celebrate redemption. This is a nation built on second chances.
His appointment as President Obama’s “green jobs” czar occurred early on—and his tenure experienced a death by a thousand right wing cuts and resigned/was tossed under the bus (you make the call), for a controversial past. The smear machine worked.
Jones, who joined the administration in March as special adviser for green jobs at the CEQ, had issued two public apologies in recent days, one for signing a petition in 2004 from the group 911Truth.org that questioned whether Bush administration officials “may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war” and the other for using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.
His one-time involvement with the Bay Area radical group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), which had Marxist roots, had also become an issue. And on Saturday his advocacy on behalf of death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of shooting a Philadelphia police officer in 1981, threatened to develop into a fresh point of controversy.
But what has earned Jones the NAACP President’s Award is is present contributions to society, not what he has already apologized for in the past:
Through Green for All, and others organizations, Van Jones continues to work for an American economy that can thrive again—a nation whose prosperity reaches beyond Wall Street to Main Street and back streets. A country where jobs in installation, manufacturing and construction flourish again—to upgrade our homes to conserve energy, create solar panels, build electric cars, and manufacture wind turbines and smart batteries.
Furthermore, Van is working to make sure that our country does not lose out to India, China or Germany in the green industrial race. His vision gives us a fighting chance to reclaim something we lost years ago, back when steel was king. In those days, blue-collar workers could support their families with their wages, and our nation was not the world’s leading debtor. Van’s vision, in short, is a vision for America restored to its place as the definitive world economic leader.
***
With that in mind, it was interesting to see this tripe land in my inbox from Coral Ridge Ministries pimping its outlandish TV show that includes Van Jones in a less-than-celebratory, fact-based manner. Unleash the crazy below the fold…
Lynn Harris has a bone-chilling article up at Salon about yet another incident of fundamentalist Christians taking their beliefs to an extreme and getting someone hurt or killed, usually and inevitably someone in a vulnerable position. In this case, the story is that of 7-year-old Lydia Schatz, whose parents beat her to death using a tool---a quarter inch plumbing supply line---recommended by the wildly popular authors Michael and Debi Pearl, who have an entire series about “child training” for evangelical Christians. Like James Dobson of Focus on Family, the Pearls are big on spanking kids, and not just small pats on the butt. In both cases, the idea is to beat the kid into submission. Dobson wrote about his preferred technique like so:
[T]he spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely. After the emotional ventilation, the child will often want to crumple to the breast of his parent, and he should be welcomed with open, warm, loving arms.
Light, swatting spankings, done in anger without courtroom dignity will make children mad because they sense that they have been bullied by an antagonists. A proper spanking leaves children without breath to complain.
Naturally, some children will complain until they’re beaten to death, a situation the Pearls apparently didn’t account for. Now they’re scrambling to avoid any moral responsibility for the death of this little girl, the severe beating of two other children. (The ones who got it the hardest were adopted children from Liberia.)
Lynn describes the debate going on inside the evangelical community about the Pearls, and what is considered “too far”. It’s all very interesting, and I suggest you read her article. But I’m going to argue that the continued debating over the line between forcing someone to submit and overt abuse that goes on in this world completely misses the point. When you define entire classes of people, whether children or women, as existing to submit and suggest that willfulness is an evil brought upon your family by the devil, then abuse is inevitable. The idea itself is abusive and dehumanizing. Everything else that follows from it is simply logical.
I’m struck, when reading right wing Christian child-rearing advice, on how much the advice resembles the tactics that wife beaters use against their victims.
Via Pharyngula comes this story of the persecution of an 8th grade science teacher in North Carolina, persecution based on the students’ and their parents’ belief that the teacher isn’t a Christian. Here are the facts: Melissa Hussain was suspended from her job teaching 8th grade science after she complained on her Facebook page about being the victim of persecution from a bunch of ignorant rednecks, which she called a “hate crime”. This was basically the summation of the complaint that got her in trouble, apparently because that sort of venting from school teachers isn’t allowed. I’m not sure how I feel about that rule---in general, I think the censorship of employees in our country has gotten way out of hand, so I’m on her side---but I can sort of see why there is such a rule. But let’s be clear---that this Facebook posting was discovered probably has a lot to do with the general levels of harassment that the citizens of Wake County felt was appropriate to subject Hussain to, because they believe she’s not a Christian.
The reports I could find on this don’t explain why they think Hussain isn’t a Christian. It could be her last name---I’d be shocked if that wasn’t a factor---or the fact that she’s a science teacher. Or maybe she isn’t a Christian and didn’t take pains to hide that fact. So what? This country supposedly respects religious freedom, and that counts even for school teachers and even for women and even in North Carolina. The levels of harassment this woman was subject to are shocking, even for a bunch of ignorant rednecks. The harassers are admitting that they were provoked by the fact that Hussain taught real world biology that included the theory of evolution.
On her Facebook page, Hussain wrote about students spreading rumors that she was a Jesus hater. She complained about her students wearing Jesus T-shirts and singing “Jesus Loves Me.” She objected to students reading the Bible instead of doing class work.
But Annette Balint, whose daughter is in Hussain’s class, said the students have the right to wear those shirts and sing “Jesus Loves Me,” a long-time Sunday School staple. She said the students were reading the Bible during free time in class.
So, what appears to be happening is that the parents are encouraging their children to disrupt class to harass a woman they believe deserves no respect by refusing to do their schoolwork, and loudly singing hymns. And when called out on it, they play innocent, acting like open disruption of the classroom is just a legitimate, harmless expression of belief. This is not all that Hussain was subject to. Students got into the habit of leaving religious materials on her desk to taunt her. Postcards with pictures of Jesus were left on her desk so that students could act all butt hurt when she did what you always do when junk mail is left for you, which is throw it away. Bibles were left on her desk, presumably to create the same kind of faux outrage if she treated them like anything short of magical objects. After the evolution dust-up, when kids tried to stop the lesson by squawking about Jesus and no doubt freaking out on the teacher, a student left a Christmas card on Hussain’s desk with the word “Christ” underlined.
This behavior, of course, is bullying, and it appears to be encouraged by parents. Bullying is the absolute favorite tactic of the religious right, from women’s clinic blockades to calling the cops on women who dare admit while pregnant to being anything but as blissed out as a dog suckling her pups. Men are subject to this kind of bullying, but generally, wingnuts prefer to set their sights on female targets, because they believe women are weak, and like all bullies, they prefer to pick on someone they perceive as weak.
Since I can smell the victim-blaming coming a mile away, I will say that it’s obvious that Hussain didn’t handle this situation with the utmost maturity. Very young schoolteachers often take students’ misbehavior personally, and then the students smell blood in the water and go nuts. I definitely saw this happen to teachers when I was a kid, especially in junior high school, when a lot of students turn into complete monsters and enjoy torturing teachers, fellow students, anyone they can act out their angst on. Maybe some people just aren’t cut out for teaching, if they really can’t control a classroom full of evil little shitheads.
In addition, Hussain seems to have not really understood what she was up against, in terms of right wing nuttery. But you have to cut people a break on this---even those of us who’ve been deep in the political shit for a long time now can still have our breath taken away by how vicious wingnuts are, how sadistic, and how much they absolutely love ruining the lives of people guilty of disagreeing with them. A fight between a decent human being and someone who would kick little old ladies that have fallen down isn’t going to be a fair fight, since the latter is practically begging to fight dirty. For Hussain, I can’t imagine how frustrating it was to have students act this way with the full support of their parents and the tacit support of the school district. And she made ill-advised choices that indicate that she didn’t understand the full extent of the problem. Now that she’s been punished but the harassers have not, perhaps she’ll wrap her head around this.
This review of the hellish situation in Texas, where a bunch of school board members are waging war on the Enlightenment through textbook standards, could have been a lot more interesting than it is. But for some reason, writer Russell Shorto actually tries to establish some sort of reason to a group of fundamentalist Christians arguing for teaching that America is a “Christian nation”, even though the very same group of people believe the planet is only 10,000 years old and Margaret Sanger was some sort of Satanic prophet of a birth control religion. Shorto doesn’t go as far as to suggest that the attempts to rewrite history to villainize any kind of progress from secular government to the labor movement are in any way, shape, or form anything short of ridiculous, evil propaganda, but in his eagerness to muddy the waters with a little “both sides” crap, he makes some specious arguments.
There is, however, one slightly awkward issue for hard-core secularists who would combat what they see as a Christian whitewashing of American history: the Christian activists have a certain amount of history on their side.....
In his reply, Jefferson said it was not the place of the president to involve himself in religion, and he expressed his belief that the First Amendment’s clauses — that the government must not establish a state religion (the so-called establishment clause) but also that it must ensure the free exercise of religion (what became known as the free-exercise clause) — meant, as far as he was concerned, that there was “a wall of separation between Church & State.”
This little episode, culminating in the famous “wall of separation” metaphor, highlights a number of points about teaching religion in American history. For one, it suggests — as the Christian activists maintain — how thoroughly the colonies were shot through with religion and how basic religion was to the cause of the revolutionaries.
It’s an enormous stretch to take an episode where Jefferson went out of his way to argue for a secular government that takes no stance on religion is in fact evidence that the fundies have a point in the slightest about how America is a “Christian nation”. It’s misleading your audience to play footsie with ideas like this. Shorto takes way too seriously some of the fundie kicking around of historical facts they’ve gleaned here and there---such as the fact that the Puritans seemed to be interested in god and some states had official religions in the early days of the nation. That they aren’t completely illiterate doesn’t make them intellectual in the slightest; they weave together selectively picked facts to create a narrative about our country’s history that has no grounding in reality, in order to argue for theocracy, which directly and obviously goes against even the softest reading of the First Amendment.
It’s all well and good for Shorto to argue that religion played a role in our nation’s history, but to suggest that there are “hardcore secularists” who deny this is pure straw. Most “secularists"---i.e. people of various private beliefs who think the government should not favor one religion over others or over non-belief---that I know of would happily agree that it’s cowardly not to talk about the way religious rhetoric played out in American politics and culture at various points in time. Passages like this mislead the audience about what’s really going on here:
In fact, the founders were rooted in Christianity — they were inheritors of the entire European Christian tradition — and at the same time they were steeped in an Enlightenment rationalism that was, if not opposed to religion, determined to establish separate spheres for faith and reason.
Okay..... but I get the impression Shorto is trying to find some “in-between” space between meanie civil liberties types and moronic fundamentalists. But this statement above isn’t anything that even hardcore atheist activists would disagree with. We would just point out that the Enlightenment was about stepping away from allowing religion to define every aspect of life, from knowledge-gathering to government. No one is suggesting we whitewash the impact of Christianity on Western culture and American culture. Nor should we pretend the Enlightenment wasn’t a step towards secularism.
Overall, this article was really interesting reading and I highly recommend it. But like it or not, this issue isn’t as complicated as Shorto is making it out to be. The fundies on the Texas School Board reject the Enlightenment, and are trying to deny outright the impact it had on the Founding Fathers and our nation’s development. They may have fancy degrees or be able to bullshit to reporters with the best of them, but at the end of the day, they’re Bible-thumpers who aren’t really interested in history, except as a source of figures to exploit to confuse the issue. Their main goal is to make history classes so confusing that your average voters don’t understand that there’s a separation between church and state---or how said separation actually protects most religions right along with protecting atheist and agnostic belief.
When the “kill gays” bill in Uganda was denounced today by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton at the National Prayer Breakfast, everyone knew it would fire up the bigots— and Cliff Kincaid (usasurvival.org) was quick to hit the send button on this hate-filled press release. You won’t believe the defense—the execution and “cleansing” by Uganda of its gays is all about ensuring national health.* I sh*t you not.
Kincaid, president of America’s Survival, Inc., and editor of Accuracy in Media, says the legislation is designed to save lives by discouraging homosexual practices which spread disease and death.
“The purpose is completely at variance with what the U.S. media have reported,” he said. “It is not a ‘Kill the Gays’ bill. Rather, it is designed to kill the disease that some homosexuals spread through their reckless and irresponsible conduct and lifestyle.”
Kincaid said that the much-publicized death penalty provision in the bill is for deliberately spreading AIDS and engaging in homosexual behavior that threatens children and society.
“Uganda’s people and government deserve support, not criticism, from the United States,” said Kincaid. “They are up against the international homosexual lobby, the money of George Soros, and the Obama Administration. They are trying to create a Christian culture that is protective of families and children.”
Would Kincaid support the execution of heterosexuals who engage in unsafe sex or who engage in pedophilia as well, since AIDS on that continent is mostly spread through heterosexual sex? I didn’t see him proposing that anywhere. As Joe Jervis said, Kincaid is
defending the bill as necessary to prevent “homosexual imperialists” from continuing their campaign to fuck as much AIDS into the children of Uganda as possible.
Kincaid and the rest of these defenders of this execution and “queer cleansing” bill are completely morally bankrupt, repugnant—and proud of it.
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* Note that in this universe of eliminationism, lesbians and the demographically lower rate of STD transmission than heterosexuals conveniently never comes up.
Look at this batsh*t crazy Human Events ad on the pending repeal of DADT. Well, clearly this is the kind of crap that the Obama administration and Congress fear—and what is causing them to call for more study and to say it will be "several years" before implementing the repeal of DADT in the WaPo:
The Defense Department starts the clock next week on what is expected to be a several-year process in lifting its ban on gays from serving openly in the military.
A special investigation into how the ban can be repealed without hurting the morale or readiness of the troops was expected to be announced Tuesday by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
While the review is likely to take the better part of this year to complete, and even more time to implement, its initiation will advance President Barack Obama's goal of repealing the ban and bring a divisive issue for the military back to the fore.
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President Obama pledged in his State of the Union Address to promote open homosexual aggression within the ranks of the military, by directly recruiting Congressmen and Senators in 2010 to overturn the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law that saves troops lives andalready guarantees equality. Ignoring a letter signed by over 1,150 retired military flag and general officers, who asked Obama to enforce the 1993 Clinton-era law that currently prohibits open homosexual aggression in the military, Obama instead sacrificed military readiness, unit cohesion, and safety of all American troops, to prioritize his special relationship with less than 1% of the American population who claimed to be homosexual in the last census.
"This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay men and women the right to serve the country they love," Obama boldly misled, repeating the vow he made during a speech Oct. 10th before a gay rights group. (The truth is homosexuals already now have the right to serve, so long as they keep their sexual aggression to themselves.) "If you adhere to our common values, you should be treated no different than anyone else," Obama said oxymoronically, defining "equality" and "values" as a sudden endorsement of illegal acts of sod omy long banned by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The Joint Chiefs sat stone-faced silent, aghast at Obama's plan, but powerless to publicly oppose their own Commander-In-Chief. We must be their voice…
And now we have to cope with theocrat arms manufacturers. What Would Jesus Do, indeed—lock and load, apparently.
Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the U.S. military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.
The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.
...Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions “have always been there” and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is “not Christian.” The company has said the practice began under its founder, Glyn Bindon, a devout Christian from South Africa who was killed in a 2003 plane crash.
Are some in the military angry at this prosyletizing? Sure. But then there are some who are thrilled about guns for God, and they are in charge:
[Michael “Mikey” Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation], an attorney and former Air Force officer, said many members of his group who currently serve in the military have complained about the markings on the sights. He also claims they’ve told him that commanders have referred to weapons with the sights as “spiritually transformed firearm[s] of Jesus Christ.”
***
If that isn’t bad enough, in an ABC followup piece, ”Marine Corps Concerned About ‘Jesus Guns,’ Will Meet With Trijicon,” we see just how compromised the thinking is in high levels of the military. Mind-blowing:
“We are aware of the issue and are concerned with how this may be perceived,” Capt. Geraldine Carey, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps, said in a statement to ABC News. “We will meet with the vendor to discuss future sight procurements.” Carey said that when the initial deal was made in 2005 it was the only product that met the Corps needs.
However, a spokesperson for CentCom, the U.S. military’s overall command in Iraq and Aghanistan, said he did not understand why the issue was any different from U.S. money with religious inscriptions on it.
“The perfect parallel that I see,” said Maj. John Redfield, spokesperson for CentCom, told ABC News, “is between the statement that’s on the back of our dollar bills, which is ‘In God We Trust,’ and we haven’t moved away from that.”
I don’t even know where to begin with that delusional thinking. I realize that at its core, both are Constitutional no-gos, but there is no comparison to it being on currency vs a weapon transmitting a message of both violence and religion in a military conflict where we’re already accused of infusing it with theocratic bullshit courtesy of BushCo.
For the homobigots out there who are worried about the downfall of marriage if gays and lesbians are allowed to partake in it, let this be an example of how mundane and committed married life can be for some of us working hard on The Homosexual Agenda.
..."Conservative" icon Glenn Beck, in a conversation with Bill O’Reilly, said basically he doesn’t care about the attack on traditional marriage. Asked if the California ruling will harm the country in any way, he responded: “No I don’t. Will the gays come and get us? I believe that Thomas Jefferson said: ‘If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket what difference is it to me?’”
My first question upon reading about 
When the “kill gays” bill in Uganda was denounced today by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton at the 
And now we have to cope with theocrat arms manufacturers. What Would Jesus Do, indeed—