BSG 3.01 (briefly)

Copied and very slightly expanded from a comment left elsewhere...

( BSG 3.01 - spoilers; I have some issues. )

Today's Cultural Warfare Update (Part 1 of 2)

I'm sorry I've been so lame about these lately. Classes are really still taking everything I have. I should, honestly, be working on Biology homework right now, and will be after I post this Part I and another post with a flower picture. Then I'll get to work on Part II.

But now, today's news:

Art teacher fired after museum field trip;

This isn't the fundamentalist side of the report, but is instead the side from the family assaulted; a Jewish family flees a Delaware school district's aggressive evangelisation of Christianity; lawsuits against this sort of thing would be almost entirely stopped by PERA, the fundamentalists' top priourity in this Congressional session and which passed the house; report and URL courtesy elfs;

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol implies strongly basically that all gay men are pedophiles waiting to act, and that a Democratic congress would pass a resolution pushing the Boy Scouts to let the perverts molest the kids stop discriminating against GBLT people;

James Dobson spends his Friday programme defending Hastert, the Republican leadership, and, in particular, trying to get fundamentalists not to step away from the Republican party this midterm election; promises that a large theoconservative turnout will "turn the direction of this country... maybe forever";

California marriage-equality lawsuit changes course again; claimants to appeal; as always, Focus on the Family repeats the Federal amendment drumbeat;

"Liberty Sunday," a theocon rally scheduled for October 15th, to be on various media outlets; this one's headliners are just Dobson and FRC's Tony Perkins; primary focus is how anti-discrimination law protecting GBLT civil rights violates freedom of religion;

Focus on the Family promotes a middle school/high school "be silent" anti-abortion-rights student protest; what I find interesting about this is that it is the exact same action they condemn when it's the GBLT-student driven "Day of Silence" to protest anti-gay law and attitudes. When it's against abortion rights, they're for it; when it's in support of GBLT people, it's disruptive and should be shit down;

Focus on the Family thinks Justice Alito being on the court will have the court turn against abortion rights in general;

Focus on the Family continues to follow the court case against the "InnerChange Freedom Initiative," which has been ordered shut down as unconstitutional; it was a prisoner rehabilitation programme that worked to convert prisoners to fundamentalist Christianity, and yes, that was an explicit part of its purpose, and yes, it was getting state funding;

Standard FotF "huge success" report for one of their anti-marriage get-out-the-vote political rallies, this one in Minneapolis;

FotF ACTION ITEM to protest Ms. magazine for not printing anti-abortion activist material in an abortion-rights story;

Another "Liberty Sunday" theocon political confab plug, talking about how GBLT people having civil rights is anti-Christian and destroys religious liberty; keep in mind that Focus on the Family (and several other theocon groups) want to overturn Lawrence v. Texas (2003) so that GBLT people can be made illegal by state legislatures again;

From someone not on Livejournal, a bit of reaction against some of this; the First Freedom First organisation getting petition signatures supporting separation of church and state and acting against theocon efforts to govern via religion;

FotF condemns Ms. magazine cover-story supporting abortion rights that let women who had had abortions talk about why reproductive rights are so important;

FotF links to "TrueU," a fundamentalist evangelical site aimed at college students which is, iirc, actually run by Focus on the Family, promoting "intelligent design" creationism. Their idea of a "debate" on the subject is to come up with two ideas of ID/creationism and pit them against each other;

FotF story on local protests against Philadelphia schools and Gay and Lesbian History Month; no events are planned, but the local groups are saying "It is an outrage; it's against God, and God is not pleased" for the school district acknowledging that some of their children come from same-gender parent households - one particular reading flashcard has them pissed off;

I don't even need to write a summary for this one, Focus on the Family does a perfectly good job at doing it themselves: "Bill O'Reilly wants to be your leader. The host of Fox News Channel's popular program The O'Reilly Factor, he wants to be the leader of the culture wars —and says so in his new book, Culture Warrior, published by Broadway Books";

CANADIANS LISTEN UP: Okay, know how I've talked a lot about how the American fundamentalists create this whole circular set of references and report each others' PR as news stories, and looping back upon themselves to make each other look like authorities? It's often called the Echo Chamber, or can be called "creating the story" - specifically, a story built up that is immune to factual challenges, because people have decided it's already true. Here's a good example of the Canadian branch of Focus on the Family doing exactly that. A couple of CWUs ago, I pointed to a "Institute of Marriage and Family Canada" release condemning GBLT marriage rights as anti-child, and so on. This group was founded by Focus on the Family Canada. Now here, a week or so later, we have Focus on the Family Canada presenting the IMFC as an external trusted source - and repeating the story. Unlike the American version, they do footnote the relationship at the bottom of the page - that's unusual;

Focus on the Family Canada condemns Manitoba sex-ed resource book, which they've done several times before. Note again the cross-quoting of each other as external validating sources. Note also that this is the original version of the story, or at least as much as I got in email; the web site version has been changed due to unspecified inaccuracies. I'd love to get a copy of this book - it looks very much like a book of essays written by high-school-age lesbians about their own experiences and opinions, once I make my way through the FundaFilter, but I can't be sure without actually seeing it.

( Articles and excerpts below )

another personal update, but there is also a flower

Not as tired as last weekend, but still not exactly high-energy. I think the lousy food situation at the school is not helping anything, but even aside from that, core physical systems are not yet nominal. I'm eating way more than I traditionally would but am not gaining weight, which is fine - one might even say tasty, were the lunch options at Shoreline better - but regardless, it's strange. Soft drinks - at least, without a 50/50 mix with something else like orange juice - are still off the billet. Sleep is both more needed and, well, strange in ways that are difficult to describe, and I do not have normal sleeping rhythms, as is evidenced by this morning's 6AM internal wake-up call. And so on.

Still very nervous about classes. I did not feel at all confident in class participation in either Biology or Japanese, and I feel both are starting to pick up speed a bit. (Well, in Bio, it's less "picking up speed" and more "getting out of chemistry that I already know and into actual biology.") Hopefully that A on that Japanese quiz won't be my first and last 100% on a language quiz ever; and hopefully Biology won't all be like this chapter, which mostly seems to consist of data acquisition, much of which looks to me like it expects to be memorised. So I'm very much worried about that.

In sillier news, what happens when you have a bunch of old dead hard drive platters and a similarly-old drive housing that still spins up? Pretty much this. G'wan, clickie. It's worksafe.

Thursday's miles: 2.6
Friday's miles: 3.9
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1358.4
Miles out of Rivendell: 893.4
Miles out of Lothlórien: 438.4
Miles past Rauros Falls: 30.5
Miles to Isengard: 440.4


Freckles

Today's Cultural Warfare Update (Part 2 of 2)

Family Research Council statement on the Foley scandal says it's the result of "a society that rejects sexual restraints in the name of diversity," which is to say, they're blaming the queers;

Family Research Council ACTION ITEM against a Missouri stem-cell research funding voter initiative, calling it a "human cloning initiative" to make their base think the Cylons are going to be coming down on their asses;

Family Research Council ACTION ITEM against a medical marijuana initiative in South Dakota;

FRC promotes Focus on the Family's 'GBLT rights will destroy religious liberty' theoconservative rally on October 15th; it'll be yet another simulcast; the previous CWU had a list of cobroadcasters. This one goes further and says T3H GAY will crush all dissent and "the ultimate gag order ... will be applied against ordinary Americans who disagree with the extremist agenda of homosexual activists";

Fundamentalists in Atlanta are trying to ban the Harry Potter book series from libraries again, this time not just saying that they promote evil, but that they promote the Wiccan faith, with which they actually have no actual relationship, but hey, whatever;

American Family Association finally spits out a few words about the Foley situation - condemning "liberals' exploitation" of the scandal;

HEY CANADIANS: Anybody know what the Institute for Canadian Values is complaining about with this article, "Attack on government employee's religious faith a sign of growing "anti-religious bigotry" on political left in Canada"? They're determinedly non-specific on the details. If I were to apply the American fundamentalist filter to it, I'd have several ideas, most of which centre around not wanting to, say, process paperwork for a legally married gay couple, but that's purest speculation on my part here;

Canada Family Action Coalition takes their turn at the "all homosexuals are perverted pedophiles" line in response to the Foley scandal, even though it's not their government; clearly, the influence from American theoconservative groups is very strong at this point;

Faith and Freedom Network says fundamentalist Christian absolutes are needed in government and complains about how "liberty is the greatest virtue" when what is needed is more "Biblical absolutes";

FFN worries about the impact of the Foley scandal on Republican chances next month, urges the strongest possible voter turnout;

FFN adds, "but we aren't partisan";

FFN looks for volunteers to be "Church Contacts" to get FFN political papers into churches as much as possible and get voters to vote with them; they want similar positions for legislative district slots;

Concerned Women for America condemn Ms. magazine's cover story on stories of women who have had abortions for being pro-abortion-rights and not including anti-abortion-activist rhetoric;

CWA's rather short statement on the Foley scandal uses a few key phrases that won't get noticed much by anybody outside their base, so won't have much effect. But the wink-and-nod to the base is GBLT people ("some special interest groups") want age of consent laws gone, and that GBLT people ("some lifestyles") are too dangerous to be legal. (CWA has regularly complained about Lawrence v. Texas before, the 2003 Supreme Court decision overturning 24 state "sodomy" laws that made lesbian and gay people effectively illegal in those states. However, they have been much less explicit about their "all gays are paedophiles" rhetoric in the last assortment of years, particularly in text);

The San Francisco Chronicle does an unusual thing: it actively calls out the fact that the fundamentalist movement routinely accuses lesbian and gay people of being paedophiles, and that they want GBLT peoples' rights actively restricted;

This is neat: Concerned Women for America themselves summarise this one: "Congress Affirms Sectarian Prayers by Military Chaplains." This is about the Congressional overturning of post-lawsuit rules instituted by the Navy and Air Force after anti-Jewish harassment (and anti-other-religions harassment) by fundamentalist Christians at the Air Force Academy and Navy facilities. The Congressional act returned the situation back to the 1999 ruleset which allowed the harassment to get started. This will no doubt lead to more lawsuits, of course; CWA and some other theocon groups have been active in getting the post-lawsuit rules removed. The interesting part is that they themselves have now called this a sectarianism issue. And we all know how well that kind of thing has been going in other countries as of late, but, well, they think they can win. So there you are.

( Articles and excerpts below )