Saturday, August 22, 2009

Laurie Higgins Wants Parents to Know a HS Math Teacher is an Atheist

A call to arms for the godless, for the sake of our CHILDREN!

Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute Sends an Open Letter to the Friendly Atheist - Repost of my comment on Hemant’s blog:

This makes my blood boil. Who the hell does this woman think she is? Christian busybodies injecting their views into educational settings BY COMPLAINING about things their small minds find “offensive” is a reprehensible tactic that’s proven effective more often than not.

The reason the so-called “New Atheist” movement is an absolute necessity (like yesterday), is because these fundamentalist crybabies like Laurie Higgins have enjoyed 30 years of empire-building in the media, accomodation, appeasement and outright, illegal government endorsement allowing them to manipulate public policy in their favor. They insist on their First Amendment rights while seeking to restrain everyone else’s. They’re out of control and it’s long past time to remind them of their place. In church and homeschooling, if they’re so determined to raise generations of Jesus-bots devoid of intellectual curiosity.

With the sorry state of affairs in American education – in large part due to the dumbing down of our curriculum in order to not piss off Christians – I’m thrilled to have good teachers out there, and what they say or do outside the classroom is none of my concern.

These bullshit “Family” organizations are an obstacle to our kids’ education and a threat to the First Amendment liberties of every citizen. I consider this attack upon the Friendly Atheist (a teacher, no less!) yet another call to arms for all the rest of us, from closeted to militant. Ladies and gentlemen get those arms in (ergonomically correct typing) position and fire at will. No quarter given.
BUY HEMANT’S BOOK “I SOLD MY SOUL ON EBAY”

Sunday, September 28, 2008

In Honor of Banned Books Week

My video celebration of the freedom to READ!!!

Here’s what I dicked around with here & there today, while B went to church with a couple friends who’ll be moving away soon…

If you want any of these books, let me know! They’re in the “donate” category here at OBHQ.

Update: I tried to upload this video to MyspaceTV and it got BLOCKED for “infringement” due to the background music. For-fucking-give ME… it’s not like I used the song without attribution, nor am I using it to sell anything, goddammit! You see… this is how it happens, the “boiling of the frog.” It is not government, but the megacorporations who’ve got the government in their pockets that are using their power to restrain our speech… for NOW. We stand for it, then get used to it, and give away our most cherished rights and freedoms because we’ve trusted others to tell us how we can and cannot exercise them.

This is America. ”Somewhat free” speech is NOT enough!

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Elections: Not too depressing overall

Well, we’ve got another 4 years of the Governator; but I can live with that.  He’s sufficiently restrained by the Dems in the CA legislature not to be too dangerous.

For the most part, things went the way I’d hoped (except for Lieberman winning in CT - what’s wrong with those people?).  The ballot measures that passed or were rejected were pretty much in line with the way I wanted them to go, and the people I liked for various other local offices got in.

However, Angelenos are embarrassingly disinterested in politics.  I watch the LA Fox channel for news in the morning (mostly because I LOVE Jillian Barberie and Steve Edwards), and this morning they had Nischelle Turner out talking to “regular folks” about yesterday’s elections.  While the caption for the video calls voters’ reactions “interesting,” it’s easy (and depressing) to see that people are more knowledgeable and emotionally involved in the local fucking sports teams than they are about how and by whom they’re being governed. Disgusting.

Wow!  Just got a really exciting piece of breaking news: Rumsfeld is stepping down!!!  Halle-fucking-lujah and good riddance!

Dobson to Aid in Counseling Haggard

Call me skeptical, but somehow I doubt that this “restoration” process has as much to do with restoring the spiritual health of the hypocritical, lying, delusional scumbag Ted Haggard as it does with restoring his reputation so that in a few years he can return to his job of manipulating rank and file believers while simultaneously influencing public policy.

By The Associated Press

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—Focus on the Family founder James Dobson will be one of the people overseeing counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard, the evangelical pastor who was fired amid allegations of gay sex and drug use, a senior official of Dobson’s organization said Monday.

The counseling process, called restoration, could take years, said H.B. London, vice president for church and clergy at Focus on the Family, a Colorado Springs-based ministry.

“I think it may be more in helping to set the requirements of the restoration, set the ground rules,” London told . [sic]

Haggard was forced out as senior pastor of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs on Saturday after a former male escort alleged they had sex repeatedly and that Haggard sometimes was on methamphetamines during their trysts.

In a statement read at the church Sunday, Haggard confessed to unspecified “sexual immorality,” accepted responsibility for his actions and asked forgiveness.

Dobson will join pastor Jack Hayford of The Church on the Way in Van Nuys, Calif. and the pastor Tommy Barnett of First Assembly of God in Phoenix in overseeing Haggard, according to a letter from Haggard read at New Life services on Sunday.

“Those men will perform a thorough analysis of my mental, spiritual, emotional and physical life. They will guide me through a program with the goal of healing and restoration for my life, my marriage and my family,” Haggard wrote.

Hayford’s spokesman said he was not available for comment Monday. Barnett did not immediately return a call.

(The Church on the Way is one of the 168 houses of worship within a 5 mile radius of my house. Scary.)

Having these particular, powerful leaders of the Evangelical movement “overseeing his counseling” is clearly (to me, anyway) nothing more than circling the wagons and commencing the damage control. I’ve no doubt that Haggard will reappear on the political stage within a relatively short period of time, hat in hand and tears a-streaming, to proclaim he’s been washed in the blood of Jesus and restored, exorcised of the demons that had control of him, or blessed by some other Christ-o-riffic miracle that will convince the flock he’s worthy to return to a position of leadership.

As soon as he can convincingly deny that he loves the cock, to the satisfaction of his “restoration team,” Pastor Ted will be back. Having the endorsement of the high priests of the Religious Right will virtually guarantee he’s welcomed with open arms by the regular church-going folk who hang upon the every word of Dobson, et al.

There is none so blind as he who will not see…

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Proposition 85: Vote NO, Californians!

The issue of teen pregnancy is one that I am, and always have been, quite passionate about. It started all the way back in 1970, when a relative of mine got pregnant at 15, and delivered her son just after she turned 16.  I was only 8 at the time, but the incident and its consequences were burned into my memory.  My relative was kicked out of high school, and lost not only her freedom to simply be a teenager, but it seemed to me that the friends she’d had previously were suddenly no longer allowed to hang out with her.  I don’t know if that was because their parents didn’t want them associating with the “bad girl” or if they stopped coming around of their own volition, but either way my relative’s life was irreversibly altered and she went from being a carefree teenager enjoying high school to a teenaged mother and a social pariah in the smallish town we lived in.  I swore that would NEVER happen to me, and the memory of that incident played a large part in my not having sex until after I was out of high school.  To this day, I consider it my moral duty to impress upon the teenagers within my sphere of influence that engaging in sex at such a young age is best avoided altogether, and that having a baby before finishing high school is a sure way to sabotage any decent future a girl, or her baby, might hope to have.

Not only have I been a teenager, I am the mother of one (and we actually TALK), which naturally puts me in the role of “pseudo-mom” to her friends.  And although I’m fairly confident that the parents of her closest friends are similarly honest and enjoy good relationships with their girls, I can’t imagine how awful it would be to see one of these kids (whom I’ve known all their lives) have to go through the process of getting a waiver if she for whatever reason couldn’t, or didn’t want to, tell her parents she wanted to have an abortion. I cannot imagine that I, the very person with whom the parents have for years entrusted their child’s safety and well-being, would become a criminal for answering a plea for help (even if it’s nothing more than a ride) from one of these girls who are as dear to me as my own daughter.

Proposition 85 is nothing more than shit law intended to chip away at the right of women to decide whether and when they will become mothers, cloaked in the rhetoric of “keeping children safe.” It does nothing of the kind, and in fact endangers those girls whose families are already so fucked up that they feel they can’t talk to their parents about a pregnancy. What really keeps kids safe is their having adults they can count on and confide in. In an ideal world their parents would fulfill that role, but here in the REAL world that’s not an option for many kids… so they have to be able to find other adults they can trust to advise them and act in their best interests in parental fashion, and the State should butt the fuck OUT!

I’m hopeful that Californians will once again reject this latest Parental Notification law, just like they did last year’s version, Prop. 73.  In the unlikely event Prop. 85 does pass, however, I suppose I’ll end up either spending some time on the phone and in court, or perhaps even doing time should I be called upon to skirt the law in an emergency situation.

* sigh *

(posted in response to CityMama’s call to action)