From The Wild Hunt by Jason Pitzl-Waters

Christian Military and Malicious Magic

( Excerpt. Click headline for full story. )

Mother Jones: Merry Christmas From the U.S. Military

( Excerpt. Click Headline for full story. )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY jarandhel)

The American Family Association's early War on Christmas campaign appears to be off to a quick start this year. This is the second email that I've gotten from them, and this time they're calling for a Boycott of Mrs Fields. Naturally, per their request to get it into the hands of as many people as possible, I've decided to forward it to where it might do the most good. ;-) Once again, they using propaganda which conflates "not offering items with Merry Christmas because they don't want to offend anyone" with "not minding if they offend Christians".

( Read more... )

In a matter which is, of course, entirely unrelated I have decided to buy way more cookies from Mrs Fields this Holiday season than I normally would have. ;-)

Edit: Edited to correct the name of the organization involved. It should have been American Family Assocation, not Focus on the Family.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY lihan161051)

I had heard hints of this about a week ago but at the time I thought it was a rather liberal church trying to counter the more dominionist-based Left Behind: Eternal Forces using a game that wasn't in the LB franchise.

Now I'm not so sure about that, because after reading the article more thoroughly and also after seeing sponsors of the group Dare2Share, which is promoting this, on Fox News' The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet with a few of their (clueless but well coached) kids, I'm thinking maybe at least some of the dominionists have given up on trying to leverage the Left Behind game and gone for one that's considerably more popular. D2S has sanitized their website pretty thoroughly, but I still see hints that there's a lot more to this than meets the eye. (It was also pretty sobering to see the guy representing D2S speaking what sounded like dominionist code language and then hearing the host of the show pick up the words at face value and riff on them without a *clue* as to what the D2S guy was really saying.) And this business of carefully avoiding the better known code words and red flags may actually be a sign that people in this movement are paying closer attention to what *we* are looking at.

Any thoughts?

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY popesnarky)

Hail Eris!

http://www.greenswatch.com/

They have the usual Dom trick of painting their ideological foes as being the sort they themselves are, and their taste for overheated language about Green policies is also cute -- to wit, "Greens Economic Policies would cause a Stockmarket Crash" (Goddess, it's good to see people with their priorities in order!); "Greens to reintroduce death tax"; "Banning Pet Ownership -- Bizarre Greens Policy" -- but the best part has to be the pages about "Creepy Greens", which includes ~gasp!~ a *witch*, and "Freaks", where you'll find a witch who ~whisper~ believes in fairies! ~/Mrs. Grundy~

http://www.greenswatch.com/creepy_greens.aspx

http://www.greenswatch.com/greens_freaks.aspx

Snarky

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY jarandhel)

Every year it seems that Christmas is marketed to us earlier. Halloween costumes are still on the shelves this year, and I have already seen Christmas trees only aisles away advertising the coming shopping season. And now another sign of the season is coming even earlier as well: the "War on Christmas". ( The American Family Association just sent this charming missive to its mailing list... )

Edit: Edited to correct the name of the organization involved. It should have been American Family Assocation, not Focus on the Family.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY wyldraven)

CNN Video: Christiane Amanpour on Ron Luce, Battle Cry, and Culture Wars

( Excerpt. Click Headline for full story. )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY wyldraven)

Salon: American Taliban on the warpath against evolution (Salon may require you to view an ad to get a site pass)
Denver Post: Threats by religious group spark probe at CU-Boulder
Panda's Thumb blog: Threats against University of Colorado Biologists

( Excerpt from Salon story. Click Headline for full story. )

sunfell

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY wyldraven)

This time it's from Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. (Link is article on the FRC site.)

And it does stink. Excerpt:

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( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY shapeshft)

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY shapeshft)

As a follow-up to the post on the anti-Hindu AFA action alert, the latest on this issue on the One News Now website is a fearmongering article claiming that Thursday's Senate prayer will "start the countdown to judgment". AFA spokesman Buddy Smith says that he hopes that senators will, "for conscience sake," choose not to enter the room until the prayers are over.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY shapeshft)

In light of the recent "Is your Doctor playing Judge?" thread, and the suggestion that there should be a list of doctors who will or won't provide adequate medical care:

When I was living in rural Virginia, I noticed that some Christian groups or individuals had banded together to create a Christian "resource directory" booklet which could be found and taken home free in a number of area businesses and churches. (Type "Christian resource directory" into Google and you'll find a number of similar online directories.) This gave Christians in the area the ability to make sure that all their money went to other Christian individuals and companies, and they could live their whole lives without darkening the door of any establishment unsupportive of their fundamentalist views.

The flip side of that is that anybody wanting to avoid such businesses had a handy directory of places NOT to go. Anybody on this list living in an area where these directories are being produced could use these as exactly this sort of handy reference tool, although in the case of medical care, there may well be doctors not listed who still nevertheless refuse to prescribe treatment.

If a group were to get together to create lists of medical providers and pharmacists that support full reproductive health care, that might be a double-edged sword. It could indeed provide individuals with a helpful guide of who will give them adequate care or not, but it could also be used by militant Christians to harass doctors that provide this care, pharmacists who fulfill prescriptions, etc. Same with business listings; I have seen and heard of a number of businesses that have been bankrupted by boycotts after some Christian group got wind that the owner of the store believed or did something they regarded as "evil." Not all of these incidents occurred in the South, either; a few occurred nearby where I live now in rural New York state. A home decor store owned by a spiritualist was one such instance.

In essence, I'm torn between wanting to create such lists, and fearing for what may happen to people and businesses that list themselves there. Perhaps whether this is a good idea or not depends on the area.

I'm interested in any ideas people have regarding this.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

Converting Kirk Cameron

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

From The NY Times

June 18, 2007
By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN

IN a commercial for Trojan condoms that has its premiere tonight, women in a bar are surrounded by anthropomorphized, cellphone-toting pigs. One shuffles to the men’s room, where, after procuring a condom from a vending machine, he is transformed into a head-turner in his 20s. When he returns to the bar, a fetching blond who had been indifferent now smiles at him invitingly.

Directed by Phil Joanou (“State of Grace”), with special effects by the Stan Winston Studio (“Jurassic Park”), the commercial is entertaining. But it also has a message, spelled out at the end: “Evolve. Use a condom every time.”

“We have to change the perception that carrying a condom for women or men is a sign they’re on the prowl and just want to have sex,” said Linda Kaplan Thaler, chief executive of the Kaplan Thaler Group, the New York advertising agency that created the “Evolve” campaign. “It’s a sign of somebody being prepared — if the opportunity arises — to think about their own health and the health and safety of their partner.”

( But the pigs did not fly at two of the four networks where Trojan tried to place the ad. )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY hummingwolf)

Those of you who enjoy Slacktivist's excellent series of Left Behind critiques might also be interested in the Cynic Sage's posts on Every Man's Battle. For those unfamiliar with EMB, it's a series of books (and seminars and lunchboxes(?)) marketed to Christian men who are concerned about their masculinity and sexual purity. If you tune into your local Christian radio station, there's a good chance these books or books like them will be part of the conversation after a while. Interesting look at the intersection of marketing and cultural warfare.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY catvincent)

Sara at Orcinus has another excellent post this week, where she looks at a plausible future scenario of Dominionist action post-2008-Democratic-victory (assuming, of course, there is one). It's not a very pretty picture...

An excerpt:

' The widespread public disaffection with the religious right is real and growing. The first-generation leaders are dying off; and they're losing unusual numbers of their hand-picked successors (Ralph Reed, Ted Haggard) in corruption and sex scandals. Unless the Democrats really screw it up (always a possibility), they are going to lose the 2008 election -- and with it, most of their power to work their political will on the rest of us. Past history suggests that the religous right won't return as a political force for another 20-40 years; and that the actual length of that exile will depend almost entirely on how thoroughly we manage to discredit them and their ideas. They're falling all on their own; but once they're down, it'll be up to us to make sure they stay there.

However, being out of politics doesn't mean they'll be completely gone from our midst. Those institutions they've built now constitute an entire separate subculture. They've got their own media, schools, arts, resorts, hospitals, nursing homes, malls, and community gathering places. It's entirely possible to live from cradle to grave without ever having to step outside of this carefully-created Christianist reality sphere. Even if this alternate universe loses it worldly power, it doesn't mean its residents will need to ever step outside that bubble if they don't want to. In some form -- the same, or slightly diminished -- this culture will probably continue to carry on along its own separate path. We should not imagine that just because we no longer see them goofing on the air, they no longer exist. FDR-era liberals made that mistake; we should take pains not to repeat it.

Furthermore, they’ve built shadow organizations within our most powerful national institutions -- most notably, Congress, the military, and the legal system. Losing political power will reduce the resources available to this network, hurt recruitment, and weaken its clout; but we can't afford to assume that the whole thing will just vanish on its own. How much of it remains, again, is up to us -- in this case, how effectively we can root out these religious cabals and disentangle them from our public and private institutions. On this front, the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy will last precisely as long as we allow it to.

Also, as noted in the post below, they've already raised several million kids in this cultural hothouse, and carefully indoctrinated them to carry on God's work in spite of Satan's (er, our) efforts. So we need to ask: Where will these kids be in another ten or 20 years? '

The previous post she refers to in the text is the one I posted here. The following article at Orcinus on the right wing and domestic terrorism, which mentions Dominionism as a major player, is here.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY gothic_oreo)

Coulter on Jerry Falwell

Jerry Falwell -- Say Hello to Ronald Reagan!
by Ann Coulter (more by this author)
Posted 05/16/2007 ET
Updated 05/16/2007 ET

No man in the last century better illustrated Jesus' warning that "All men will hate you because of me" than the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who left this world on Tuesday. Separately, no man better illustrates my warning that it doesn't pay to be nice to liberals.

Falwell was a perfected Christian. He exuded Christian love for all men, hating sin while loving sinners. This is as opposed to liberals, who just love sinners. Like Christ ministering to prostitutes, Falwell regularly left the safe confines of his church to show up in such benighted venues as CNN.
( More inanity follows )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ravan)

While not strictly related to Dominionism, this does come as a result of Dominionist influence in our society. ( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY lihan161051)

.. when I got an email on one of the lists I'm subscribed to, with a link to Lousiana Conservative's Why I am switching to the Democrat Party. I really hoped that maybe someone on the right had realized some of what I've realized about the philosophical similarities between the fundamentalists on the right and the ones on the left, and was reaching across the gap and striking a blow for tolerance, and maybe, just maybe, it was a sign of some unusual sanity and courage over there.

Then I clicked through and read it. Words fail me.

*sigh*

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY jumpinjessflash)

Ray Comfort, author of God Doesn't Believe in Atheists, alongside fellow Christian and actor Kirk Cameron (Growing Pains) will butt heads with two ardent nonbelievers using only scientific fact in a debate sponsored by ABC. Comfort says that the evidence will “absolutely” confirm that there is a God, and he will not speak about his faith.

"Most people equate atheism with intellectualism," explained Comfort in a statement, "but it's actually an intellectual embarrassment. I am amazed at how many people think that God's existence is a matter of faith. It's not, and I will prove it at the debate – once and for all. This is not a joke. I will present undeniable scientific proof that God exists.”


Cameron will use the event to also speak out against evolution, which he thinks is not credible and a major contributor to the growth in atheism.

"Evolution is unscientific. In reality, it is a blind faith that's preached with religious zeal as the gospel truth. I'm embarrassed to admit that I was once a naïve believer in the theory,” said the former television star in a statement. “Atheism has become very popular in universities – where it's taught that we evolved from animals and that there are no moral absolutes. So we shouldn't be surprised when there are school shootings.”

Full article? Why, sure, it's right here.
This is the first time I have ever wished for a DVR.