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This just in from DefCon
"On Monday the Ohio board of education will hold their first meeting of the school year. DefCon has learned that they will introduce a Controversial Issues Template: a proposal that would not only allow for the teaching of intelligent design, BUT expand this war on science to target global warming education and stem cell research to boot!
On Monday, the Ohio Board of Education will hold its first fall meeting. Creationists on the board are hoping to introduce a Controversial Issues Template, which would not only allow for the teaching of intelligent design in science classrooms, but demand that teachers question global warming and highlight the religious right's opposition to stem cell research."
DefCon has a page for sending an email to the Ohio school board but folks who actually live in the state may be able to think of more directly relevant actions. Any ideas?
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I had heard of this elsewhere, and dismissed it as unlikely to occur, but there is indeed an anti-abortion aerial banner ("This is Roe v Wade", next to a very hard-to-see picture which might be an ultrasound or a photo of a fetus). I spotted this at the day-before-Labor-Day fireworks festivities in Cincinnati, OH, an event that draws about 300,000 visitors in good weather. Here's a webpage of the probable originator of the banner: http://www.abortionno.org/CBRMidwest/0606.html
In my opinion, this was not exactly the most effective advert, but then again I was on a hill about 1.5 miles from the center of the venue. |
While the mainstream media are getting a few of the facts wrong, the story is true: the Air Force Academy's Special Programs in Religious Education now has a Freethinkers Group. |
A small UCC congregation in a theologically conservative community fades and fades until at last it becomes a target for a takeover. The members are "tired" and would rather have peace than resist the takeover. In the end, it's only a prime piece of real estate worth at least a million dollars.
There's more, much much more . . . |
Crossposted At Daily Kos and Street Prophets
When I was first given the idea to write an article comparing the tactics of the religious right to the "dark arts" a la Harry Potter, I must admit I was tempted to write a snark-o-rama to entertain progressive intellectuals. However, the more that I thought about it, I realized that this was an important subject requiring serious contemplation.
One thing that I hesitate to do, however, is use such simple colour coded phrases like "white" and "black" to discribe magick. They're culturally popular, and I will use them occsiaionally to drive home a point, but I still find it distasteful. Call me a bleeding-heart liberal, but I think it a tad bit racist to think that every thing bad and evil is "black" and everything positive and good is "white". I know a great many African-American magicians who would take issue with that.
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I envied my parent’s generation. Their generation’s war was WWII; they were called upon to fight genuine evil. It was horrible, it was an awful waste, but there was no doubting who the enemy was, who was in the wrong or what had to be done and why. Vietnam was my generation’s war. Why were we there at all? What were we dying for? Everyone just knew that no heroes came back from that war. Don’t believe me? Show me even one ticker-tape parade. Now this generation after mine is in that first position again, but it’s an even worse nightmare, one my parents could not have imagined, would not have believed: This time it’s our leader! This time we’re the torturers, the invaders, the destroyers! This time we attacked first on a faked-up pretext and murdered, at the least, tens of thousands of innocent people, and all for the greed and fanaticism of a few. I am angry, yes, but more than that, I am heartbroken. |
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Back in the early to mid-seventies I worked ambulance. I don’t know how many times I was called to the scene of an intelligent, lovely, sweet young girl, just barely a woman, who had been lied to by her parents and her boyfriend, not told anything worth knowing in school, and had gotten pregnant. Understand too, that these were not all poor kids in poor neighborhoods – many were middle-class, with two cars in the garage and two frightened parents standing by. Once I had to break down the bathroom door – the girl was bleeding to death (which she did), and was too ashamed to face her parents! Too often, by the time I got there, she was well on her way to bleeding out and dying, or already had died. |
We Unite Ohio's Operation Ohio project reports:
On August 29th, Michelle Goldberg, author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (www.kingdomcoming.com) will participate in a moderated, non-partisan dialogue with Phil Burress of the Citizens for Community Values. (www.ccv.com)
Mr. Burress openly takes credit for the 2004 Bush Ohio win through having gotten out the Religious Right vote based on his efforts to place the Marriage Amendment on the ballot. He remains a key figures in the movement, both statewide and nationally.
When: Tuesday, August 29 7:00 p.m.
Where: The Cintas Center at Xavier University
Sponsored by: The Brueggeman Center for Dialogue and UnderOneTent.org
The debate was heard via streaming audio at DefCon.
Don't forget to register in advance for DefCon's streaming audio.
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One of the biggest concerns that I have, that I express over at my blog, is the lack of respect for "facts."
The person who is unwilling to pay attention to what science tells us is "the real world" is somebody who, in a sense, cannot tell the difference between a glass of water and a glass of poison.
The problem is that political leaders who cannot tell the difference will give us poison to drink, while thinking that we should be grateful for bringing us something to quench our thirst.
Ironically, the day after I posted the article below to my blog, a story broke about people in India who could not tell the difference between good, clean water and poison.
Alonzo Fyfe
The Atheist Ethicist
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The Taliban had their Ministry for the Protection of Vice and Virtue. We have our decency police: the Federal Communications Commission, chaired by Kevin Martin, an enthusiastic decency warrior. As reported on NPR's morning edition this morning,
CBS will push the limits of FCC indecency regulations when it airs a newly revised Sept. 11 documentary next month. Despite increasingly tight FCC guidelines, the program will contain raw language seldom heard on network television.
The term "indecency" has nothing to do with violence, lying, or hurting and abusing other humans and planet earth. It's about swearing. It's about using a narrow interpretation of the Ten Commandments (Thou shalt not use the Lord's name in vain) as the basis for policy decisions.
The people running this country want us to go back to the era of the Puritans. America's Providential History, a popular textbook in Christian schools and the Christian homeschool movement, extols the Puritans as having created the ultimate dominionist society:
The primary strength of the Puritans was their "spirit of dominion." They recognized the scriptural mandate requiring Godly rule, and zealously set out to establish that in all aspects of society. (p. 84) |
Thanks to Ed Brayton, author of Dispatches From The Culture Wars for this tasty catch of the day :
Anthony D'Amato of the Northwestern University School of Law has a new paper available at SSRN that compares the statistics for the last 35 years on access to pornography and the incidence of rape. The religious right likes to argue that pornography increases rape, but the statistics certainly do not bear that out. The correlation actually cuts strongly the other way. As D'Amato points out, rape has decreased by 85% since 1970, while pornography has become vastly more available and more popular. That doesn't prove causation, of course, though there are hypotheses that make such an argument. But at the very least, it makes it very difficult for advocates of a link to explain away that clear correlation. |
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