LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY jamie_miller)

A Christian group urging parents to smack their children, using discipline sessions lasting up to 15 minutes, has been accused of promoting what amounts to child abuse.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

An interesting article over on AlterNet talks about the assault by 'pro-lifers' on the last operating abortion clinic in Mississippi. These hateful and aggressive people will get into your face and tell you that they're 'saving babies' until they're blue in the face.

Truth is, they aren't. They're destroying the self determination of women. They are against women having any personal freedom and autonomy at all. Making sure that they must carry all pregnancies to term- even those who are physically dangerous for them- is a means to put women 'into their place'.

No matter how many people have been duped into joining the anti-abortion movement on the basis of "saving babies," as Bob Avakian has pointed out in his book "Preaching From a Pulpit of Bones," "The essence of the anti-abortion 'movement' has been to assert patriarchal control over women, including to insist on the defining role of women as breeders of children. The fundamentalist foot-soldiers of this 'movement' make this very clear. The following prayer offered at an Operation Rescue rally, cited in Life magazine (July 1992), typifies this: "Oh please, Lord, break the curse on women's hearts that says we don't need our men. Break that independence.'" [emphasis mine]

"Break that independence." There's the bottom line: that to these True Believers™, women are not much more than mere helpmeets, or breeders of sons, and that having our own minds, our own lives, and our own freedom from both the tyranny of males and of forced pregnancy and childbirth is somhow an affont to their hateful god.

My family tried to 'condition' me to accept this mindset when I was a child. My grandmother was especially adamant in attempting to prepare me to 'serve my husband' when I grew up. There was no question in my mind that I would not marry. She tried to teach me some of those 'womanly things' that made a good wife. I resisted as much as I could. I do regret not learning to sew from her because she was a master craftswoman. But her reason for teaching me to sew was totally contrary to my own personal desires. And they did not include marriage.

I am glad that my 'independent spirit' was not broken, and if I had a counter-prayer for these people it would be that their insistence of keeping half the population in what is little more than forced servitude be diluted to nothing, and that instead of forcing women to be servants, they learn to realize that women are people, too, with rights, needs, and yes- the desire for independence, from both men and motherhood. Instead of praying to their God of Hate to 'break' them, they should pray that women be inspired and empowered. There might be fewer children born, but in this overcrowded world, that might not be such a bad thing.

And what about the 'babies' that these people swear are being killed? If you ask your average True Believer™, they'll insist that an 8-week old fetus is a miniature baby that just needs to grow bigger. The AlterNet article talks about that, too:

Besides, a fetus is not a baby. With its assault on basic science, including evolution, and its intentionally misleading and grotesque signs, the fundamentalist movement has misled many into imagining that aborted fetuses are cute little babies just waiting to be cuddled. In fact, 90 percent of abortions take place when the fetus is no longer than this string of o's: oooooooooooooo. Since there is no way these fetuses could become fully formed, independent human beings except as a subordinate part of a woman's overall biological processes for nine months, declaring that they all should be preserved means reducing women to incubators and slaves to their biology.

The anti-abortion people howl that the Bible says that abortion is wrong, but the Bible actually says the opposite- that babies aren't 'alive' until they breathe their first breath. Breath determines life, and presence. The foes of abortion continually ignore these passages.

When I was a kid and my mom was expecting my brother, I became absolutely fascinated with the development of fetuses. I pored over books about embryology and reproduction, searing the images of the alien things into my head. And they were alien- barely human in their earliest days- with fish eyes and gills, and a tail, and crude paddles for limbs. If you put the embryos of a fish, bird, person, monkey, and cat side by side in their earliest stages of development, you would have a difficult time telling them apart. I used to have a very good and effective tactic for getting the antis and their gory photos of aborted fetuses to leave: I'd examine the photos and see an anencephalic fetus here, an acardiac twin there, and one or two uterine deaths that they would only show parts of, making you believe that these were 'babies' hacked to pieces. I would call them on these. I'd ask them highly technical questions about late term abortions and the reasons why they are still done. They'd pack up and leave. How dare I call their bluffs? How dare I actually look at their nasty pictures, and tell them that they were lies?

But reread that last quoted sentence again: Since there is no way these fetuses could become fully formed, independent human beings except as a subordinate part of a woman's overall biological processes for nine months, declaring that they all should be preserved means reducing women to incubators and slaves to their biology.

No one should be a slave to their biology- men or women- but especially women, since we have much more to lose- our lives- by blindly permitting it to rule us. I tell the loudmouthed haters that men and women were both given working brains for a reason, and not permitting women to exercise their full soveriegn rights as human beings goes against our purpose. Their god might discriminate against women, but I do not believe that a truly loving god would do such a thing. And it is for this reason that I refuse to worship their god or their scriptures. They worship a god of hate and war.

The fight over abortion rights isn't about babies. It's about women. Womens' lives. Womens' self determination and autonomy. Womens' freedom and soveriegn human rights. Never forget that. If you are a female, you are only useful to these people as a walking incubator, and nothing more. Once that precious baby is born, the woman -and that child- no longer matter to these people.

(crossposted to my journal)

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY wyldraven)

House OKs bill guarding Pledge from courts

The House, citing the nation's religious origins, voted Wednesday to protect the Pledge of Allegiance from federal judges who might try to stop schoolchildren and others from reciting it because of the phrase "under God."

The legislation, a priority of social conservatives, passed 260-167. It now goes to the Senate where its future is uncertain.

"We should not and cannot rewrite history to ignore our spiritual heritage," said Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn. "It surrounds us. It cries out for our country to honor God."

( Read more... )
Will this nonsense never cease? Do they not understand that the judiciary can, and most likely will, simply rule this unconstitutional? Oh, I know, this is just another way to score points with their conservative base.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dagoski) USA Today has put together a nice interactive map about the distribution of religions in the US.

It's pretty suprising.  One thing that becomes pretty clear is that Dominionist leaning sects are not as large a component in the American continum of belief as they would have us believe.  The number of people who report no religion is pretty surprising as well.  No religion looks like one of the bigger denominations.   So let this be a lesson here.  A small number of organized, determined people can have an extremely large influence. 

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY jenfer47)

A couple of years ago I began studying American Sign Language and scouting around for some practice video material. Almost everything I found was promoting some religious faction or other! It was probably inevitable, since it was ministers who invented the language. Today, based on the ASL newsgroups and listservs, most interpreters-in-training are wannabe missionaries.

Sun Myung Moon was one of the first to have his sermons interpreted for the Deaf. The Mormons were happy to send me a beautiful 15-volume video set of the Book of Mormon in ASL for way less than cost. The best online dictionary - http://www.aslpro.com - has a mega-religious content - but doesn't include the word "Pagan." The ASL sign for atheist is not the logical "not-believe-God-person" but "eyes blocked."

The only online source putting up fresh conversational content every day is http://www.deafmissions.com, which has content that is often downright offensive. In their view, Christians are duty-bound to try to convert unbelievers at every opportunity, and the sermons often end with "tell everyone you know about Jesus." Their earlier sermon on "hunger" briefly touched on food banks and soup kitchens, only to go into a diatribe about lazy people unwilling to work - particularly offensive when directed to a community where many people are unemployed due to inability to communicate.

In many undeveloped countries, missionaries provide the ONLY source of education for Deaf people, who can therefore be indoctrinated with all manner of dangerous nonsense. Poverty and lack of education place Deaf people at particular risk of AIDS, and getting their information from people who promote celibacy instead of condoms doesn't help matters.

In a similar vein, Sun Myung Moon has also started targeting Blacks, Indians and Africans, and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi - who is relatively innocuous as these guys go - has beat the government in extending native-language radio broadcasting to Native communities in the Far North.

The missionaries are just doing their usual thing by targeting their recruitment drive to people who are vulnerable and disenfranchised, and hence grateful for any assistance that comes their way. The real problem is that they often are the ONLY ones extending any services at all to these people.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY jargon_john)

The dog goes moo!

The dog goes moo!

The dog goes moo!

THE DOG GOES MOO!

That is so pathetic...

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY fizzyland)

Our favorite Onion-as-literal-truth blogger has rolled up his sign. Even after moving to a new blog and moving his old content over, he's stopped publishing. His 15 minutes of infamy are up and probably his fellow "No Choicers" told him to go hide under a rock after the wikipedia and Salon entries, not to mention Fark. But his posts and more importantly, those golden nuggets of internet advice, the original comments have been preserved here:

Murder Without Conscience (7/6/06) Comments

Satire? (7/10/06) Comments

College Ejumacated (7/11/06) Comments

Summing Up the Onion Flap (7/12/06, 8:35 a.m.) Comments

Attacks from the "Intellectual" Left (7/12/06, 12:12 p.m.)
And sadly, no more comments. Bad naughty evil people published Pete Shinn's info that he so trustingly left online. And so ends the fun.

And no I didn't create a satire site called March Together For Unlife. Okay, so I did.
If any of you have a blogger account and would like to be a guest publisher, I'd be happy to add you to it.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY starcat_jewel)

An Orthodox Jew takes on the "moral objections" pharmacists.

Of special note down in the comments:

(1) several links to articles with similar sentiments, including one that really pounds on the "do your job OR take the consequences, you don't get to use your religion as a Get Out Of Work Free card" angle; and

(2) a "Christians are oh so persecuted" type who starts by completely missing the opening where the author SAYS he's an Orthodox Jew and launches a personal attack, thereby making himself look a total fool. (And yes, it's a guy -- I looked at his userinfo. Small wonder he's so cool with religious discrimination against mere women.)

Also, I offer for general use my two favorite rebuttals to these people:

1) So you're saying that it's okay for an ER nurse who's a Jehovah's Witness to refuse to initiate a blood transfusion on a critically exsanguinating patient? And that he should be allowed to REMAIN on ER duty because of his religion?

2) What about a chemical engineer who takes a position with DuPont, and then refuses to run standard checks on certain processes because "these chemicals are used in war materiel, and I'm morally opposed to war because it kills innocent civilians"? Should she be fired or not? What if she didn't tell the company about her "moral objections" when they hired her? Does that make a difference?

(Note: I choose my pronouns VERY deliberately here. I also observe a pattern -- that when the "moral objector" is female, far fewer of the Christianists are willing to defend her decision.)