Today's Cultural Warfare Update

Leader of Seattle's (only?) fundamentalist mega-church wants to remake Seattle politics by having his congregation outbreed the rest of the city; no, really;

Faith and Freedom Network sends out their Judicial Voter Guide link again to their Washington State mailing list;

Faith and Freedom Network links to Focus on the Family's Washington State endorsements "voter's guide";

Faith and Freedom Network links to their questionairres as filled out by judicial candidates;

Faith and Freedom Network looks for workers for their "Walk for Washington" PAC to pump up fundamentalist voter turnout in the primary and main elections;

Concerned Women for America's Robert Knight rails against California bills, urges veto;

CWA's Jan LaRue condemns Republican Senate leadership for not working harder to confirm all Bush judicial nominees;

CWA whines that more people don't self-identify as "Evangelicals" and instead prefer other terms;

CWA: Lesson of the September 11 terrorist attacks is that America must "bring our nation back ... to God";

Fundamentalist in Britain runs afoul of British speech law; I oppose speech law; anti-gay activists bring up these cases to assert that these speech codes will be coming to the US, despite their being violently unconstitutional in our system;

"How Britain turned Christianity into a Crime"; more of what I'm talking about; this is neat because it both implies that being anti-gay and Christian are one and the same and ignores that Britain has an official state religion, which is to say Anglicanism, which is to say, a branch of Christianity;

Focus on the Family update on the pending PERA vote in the House; this would change Federal law so losers in religious-establishment cases no longer have to fork over legal fees; the expressed intent (in earlier articles) is to make it harder to sue to stop religious discrimination; now that part is only implied and Concerned Women for America's Bob Knight is calling it an "anti-bullying act";

Concerned Women for America is one off the many fundamentalist groups screaming that psychologist Dr. Michael Campion, former board member at the Illinois Family Institute, a theoconservative organisation, was suspended from doing screening work for the Minneapolis Police Department "because he's a Christian"; they blame "homosexuals" in particular. Note again the absolute equivalence of "Christian" and "anti-gay activist";

Here's the Minneapolis Star-Tribune article on the story; he'd previously stopped being brought in by the fire department after a series of complaints from non-GBLT sources; it's also alleged he marked down a woman as unsuitable because she's a single mom and there are other sources of complaint as well; whether any of this is valid, I have no idea; what's actually going on is that his past record is being examined for signs of bias, and if they clear him they'll go back to using him;

CWA's Robert Knight rails against gender reassignment by a schoolteacher, and in particular, the school's position that the teacher cannot be harassed;

Family Research Council ACTION ITEM to help pass the Virginia anti-marriage-rights constitutional amendment; GBLT people already have extremely limited rights in Virginia and certainly no ability to marry, but that isn't good enough for the theocons; two of the three types of positions involve specifically getting churches to be politically involved and active in pushing the amendment;

FRC ACTION ITEM to push military amendment to allow more overt proselytization by military pastors;

American Family Association ACTION ITEM to demand Wal-Mart quit the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, saying that it redefines marriage and gives special rights to queers;

AFA: Judge should not have issued an injunction against public-school Bible giveaways in schools - the injunction is temporary pending a final order;

AFA: Queers are diseased sex fiends;

Traditional Values Coalition endorses, pushes for legalisation of President Bush's torture regime;

TVC pushes more anti-abortion-rights groups in South Dakota pending the votes this fall;

TVC ACTION ITEMS to push PERA (making it harder to sue against religious discrimination) and the "Child Custody Protection Act," which is an anti-abortion-rights measure;

TVC ACTION ITEMS against two California bills, AB 606 and AB 1056, which they say "will require children to be indoctrinated into believing that homosexuality, bisexuality, and transsexualism, are normal and should be affirmed in the public school system";

DefendMarriage Canada attacks "Government Funded Same Sex Indoctrination," which, if I apply American fundamentalist rhetoric filter to their text, actually means sex ed that includes GBLT people;

( Transcriptions, articles, and excerpts below )

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Walking to the farmer's market (and shops) and back got me all hot and tired and such, but part of that was wearing a jacket it turned out I didn't need. Our timing was good, though; it started to rain just as we got home. I bought potatoes. Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em into you. I'm sad I missed most of cherry season - the one bag I got was so good - it had apparently been a very good year for Rainier cherries.

Today's (Sunday's) Miles: 2.4
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1321.5
Miles out of Rivendell: 856.5
Miles out of Lothlórien: 401.5
Miles to Rauros Falls: 7.5

ROBOTHON! Free to the public. Events listing at their website; September 30th and October 1st, Seattle Centre. This may not be optional depending upon how much homework I have. ^_^

Bonus non-flower picture from late spring; I liked it:


Clouds and Lake

I would like my shoulder to stop hurting now. Also, I'm irritated that apparently the fundamentalists are using something to post to their webpages that includes nonstandard characters outside the UTF-8 character set, which means Livejournal hates it, hates it so. So that last CWU took an extra half an hour as I found all the b0rken bits. Gir.

(no subject)

As noted by moonrock on seattle, tomorrow (Tuesday), American Idol is holding a round of auditions in Seattle, and it'll also be Talk Like a Pirate Day.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PEOPLE, SOMEONE PUT SOMETHING TOGETHER!

almost there... almost... there...

Unless something goes splody, I should finally reach Rauros Falls by the end of the week. Finally. I miss my bike. ;_;

Today's (Monday's) Miles: 1.2
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1322.7
Miles out of Rivendell: 857.7
Miles out of Lothlórien: 402.7
Miles to Rauros Falls: 6.3

Today, briefly, in the shower, I felt normal. Except for the ear thing, unfortunately, and being in a shower with lots of white noise, even that wasn't too bad. It was nice, even if it didn't last.

Then I did a zillion things (thanks to cow for the multi-staged ride!) and needed a nap. But still. I now have my lab coat and goggles back, 5038's upstairs front bathroom has a working fan, the Admiralty has a safe and working outlet, the bus stop trash got emptied, the front garden got cleaned of junk (a perpetual problem in the U. District) and [redacted] has a computer talking to the Murkworks South network. Plus I got an allergy shot. Not too bad for somebody who was supposed to still be in inpatient therapy working on things like walking up stairs and trying to recall words starting with M.

Oh, in other uninteresting news, I'm surprised to report that having bought the Cascade brand solar garden lights which claimed to have solar panels specifically better for our region and also bought the cool pagoda-style lights with good, but standard, solar panels of similar size: the Cascade lights are actually performing markedly better now that fall is here. The difference is pretty obvious. So, um, yay.