LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY roseross)

Americans United Applauds Settlement Of Georgia Lawsuit Over Evolution Disclaimer

A little triumph for science over blasphemous superstition. Yay.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY roseross)

Holy Warriors Set Sights on Iran by Bill Berkowitz

"The end of the world as we know it is rapidly approaching," Hagee wrote in his most recent book, "Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World". "Just before us is a nuclear countdown with Iran," he wrote, "followed by Ezekiel's war (as described in Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39), and then the final battle -- the battle of Armageddon."

For Hagee, bestselling author Joel Rosenberg and other Christian Zionists, Israel plays the critical role in End Time scenarios. Their books, commentaries, and public statements reflect their beliefs that serial conflicts in the Middle East are a sign of the biblical prophesy presaging Armageddon, the return of Jesus Christ, and the final battle for the souls of mankind.

(Click top link for entire story.)

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I'd say if warfare in one of the longest settled parts of the globe is a sign the world is ending, it would have gone long ago. It always feel both angry and sad when people are so discouraged by the state of our culture that they feel wiping everything out is the only good answer.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY vanar_en_daeor)

Interesting.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16287113/?GT1=8816

Even grandma had premarital sex, survey finds
Americans weren't any more chaste in the past, researchers report

Associated Press
Updated: 7:57 p.m. ET Dec 19, 2006

NEW YORK - More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.

“This is reality-check research,” said the study’s author, Lawrence Finer. “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades.”

Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. The study, released Tuesday, appears in the new issue of Public Health Reports.

The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people — about 33,000 of them women — in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer’s analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.

Even among a subgroup of those who abstained from sex until at least age 20, four-fifths had had premarital sex by age 44, the study found.
( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY vanar_en_daeor)

Update on this lady: I am SO glad she lost. Let's hope if she does go for the appeal that they throw that out too.

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Mother loses bid to ban Harry Potter books
Georgia mom vows appeal after Board of Education rejected request

Associated Press
Updated: 2:40 p.m. ET Dec 14, 2006

ATLANTA - The Georgia Board of Education voted Thursday to uphold a local school board’s decision to leave Harry Potter books on library shelves despite a mother’s objections.

The board members voted without discussion to back the Gwinnett County school board’s decision to deny Laura Mallory’s request to remove the best-selling books.

Mallory, who has three children in elementary school, has worked for more than a year to ban the books from Gwinnett schools, claiming the popular fiction series is an attempt to indoctrinate children in witchcraft.

“It’s mainstreaming witchcraft in a subtle and deceptive manner, in a children-friendly format,” said Mallory, who is considering a legal challenge of the board’s ruling. “The kind of stuff in these books — murder and greed and violence. Why do they have to read them in school?”

Gwinnett school officials have argued that the books are good tools to encourage children to read and to spark creativity and imagination. Banning all books with references to witchcraft would mean classics such as “Macbeth” and “Cinderella” would have to go, they said.

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, published by London-based Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, have been challenged 115 times since 2000, making them the most challenged texts of the 21st Century, according to the American Library Association.

The challenges most often claim that the series encourages children to question adult authority and promotes witchcraft, said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the deputy director for the association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16204853/

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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And here's the original story for ppl who haven't read about it:

Hearing to determine fate of ‘Harry Potter’ books in GCPS
04/19/2006

Loganville mother of four Laura Mallory would like for the county to take the Harry Potter book series off schools’ library shelves

LAWRENCEVILLE — The next challenge Harry Potter will face has nothing to do with horcruxes, Hogwart’s or the half-blood prince. Instead, it will be a group of concerned parents looking to take the series off the shelves of all Gwinnett County Public Schools.

Laura Mallory of Loganville filed an appeal last week to get the best-selling book series out of the schools’ media centers. She is an evangelical Christian who has three children at J.C. Magill Elementary School.

“I think the anti-Christian bias — it’s just got to stop,” Mallory said. “And if we don’t say something, we’ll just keep getting pushed out of the schools. And I pay taxes, too, and I think that gives me a voice to speak out about this.”
( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY evil_genius)

How have the US conservative Christian sites handled the UK prostitute killer story?

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY horvendile)

Representative Virgil H. Goode Jr (Rep. VA) had this to say about Rep Keith Ellison (Dem MN) taking his unofficial oath on the Koran.

Dear Mr. Cruickshank:

When I raise my hand to take the oath on Swearing In Day, I will have the Bible in my other hand. I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran. We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy pushed hard by President Clinton and allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country. I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.

The Ten Commandments and “In God We Trust” are on the wall in my office. A Muslim student came by the office and asked why I did not have anything on my wall about the Koran. My response was clear, “As long as I have the honor of representing the citizens of the 5th District of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives, The Koran is not going to be on the wall of my office.”

Thank you again for your e-mail and thoughts.

Sincerely yours,
Virgil H. Goode, Jr.