Today's Cultural Warfare Update (2/2)

Bay Area Reporter: "Anti-gay Democrat to lead DLC";

Faith and Freedom Network ACTION ITEM against Domestic Partnership bill in Olympia (Washington State);

FFN ACTION ITEM against DP bill, and against the longshot civil marriage bills; includes talking points;

Focus on the Family Canada condemns court ruling giving the biological father of a lesbian couple's child some parental rights as "redefining the Family;" as some sperm donors have found out in the past, this kind of ruling has a >30 year history, but they don't talk about that in their article. Note where they're quoting their own think tank (Institute for Marriage and Family Canada) as an outside source, to make themselves look bigger - tho' again, unlike in the US, they acknowledge the link later;

REAL Women of Canada (quoted on the Canada Family Action Coalition web page) start quoting anti-gay "statistics" (sourcelessly) that are part of the usual suite; queers can't have stable relationships, queers have short, diseased lives; etc;

Canada Family Action Coalition picks up on the "tolerance is intolerant" rhetoric;

CFAC and various others are picking up the US "liberal judicial activists" drumbeat, mostly to refer to decisions they dislike;

Catholic Organisation for Life and Family want marriage rights "public[ly] evaluated" again, and are very cranky about the Ontario Court of Appeals ruling; does anyone know whether any of these organisations had these kinds of issues when they were only applied to straight couples getting married/divorced/remarried, or where adoptions, or genetic material (sperm and egg donation) were involved? I'm not aware of any such complaints in the US when it was about straights, but you get queers involved and it's nothing but splody time;

Focus on the Family's Institute for Marriage and Family Canada gets an article redistributed by CFAC - they want marriage rights "re-evaluated" again, of course, saying children are harmed by GBLT parentage;

CFAC reprints Life Decisions International/LifeNews.com's boycott list for support of Planned Parenthood;

CFAC points to Ontario online petition to Premier McGuinty and Atty. General Bryant over the Ontario Appeals Court decision;

Institute for Canadian Values calls Ontario decision "naked judicial activism" while, interestingly, saying that the issues the court raised were "valid." So, um, what;

Okay, so: the Traditional Values Coalition is reporting that a therapist was fired by her employer when she refused to help a client (a lesbian) work out some issues to improve her relationship with her same-sex partner, on the basis that she had religious objections to GBLT people. The therapist filed a wrongful-termination suit, and lost. TVC calls this a "legal precedent against religious-oriented therapists" and "one more example of how homosexual activists and radical liberal judges are determined to undermine religious freedom in this country in favor of the homosexual agenda";

AFA ACTION ITEM against Fox Sports over the "Fuck Da Eagles" T-shirt worn by somebody in the crowd and seen on camera;

AFA founder and chairman Don Wildmon criticises fundamentalists for not doing enough to keep homosexuality illegal, abortion illegal, no-fault divorce off the books, and working against pr0n, and all that;

PFOX, the "ex-gay" group modeled after PFLAG, but, you know, anti-gay instead, gets a big article in the latest AFA Journal; PFOX does things like argue against anti-bullying policies that include GBLT kids, and spends a lot of time slagging PFLAG;

AFA promotes its "Origins" DVD series which claims to disprove evolutionary theory, mostly by saying, "it's just too complex!";

AFA promotes "Christian Heritage Tour" of Washington, DC - one of the many tools in the general theocon 'the founding fathers were fundamentalists' history retcon;

Family Research Council front page notes that Senator and Presidential Candidate Sam Brownback will be joining the "Blogs for Life" conference;

James Dobson tells John McCain to fuck off, demonstrating that attempting to suck up to the theocons can only go so far; this implies (to me, anyway) that Mitt Romney's attempt to convert from pro-GBLT-rights to bible-thumping Mormon anti-gay activist to get the GOP nod will fail spectacularly;

Family Research Council demands anti-gay legislation, an anti-marriage amendment to the Federal constitution, and anti-abortion law, from Nancy Pelosi, which you have to admit, is pretty funny;

FRC ACTION ITEM to suck up to Mr. Bush in thanks for his support against abortion rights, his support for the "gag rule," and so on.

( Articles and excerpts below )

briefly checking in

Mushrooms and Leaves
For the curious, it finally got above freezing last Thursday, and most of the snow had melted by Friday afternoon.

Assorted milage catchup (probably short): 10.7
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1479.3
Miles out of Rivendell: 1022.3
Miles out of Lothlórien: 567.3
Miles past Rauros Falls: 149.4
Miles to Isengard: 317.3

Japanese this quarter is so far much more difficult than last quarter, mostly because it's moving much faster and I'm not finding it easy to catch up. Thursday was a particularly bad day; I had times in class when I had no idea whatsoever what was going on. I'll be keeping a close eye on the drop date this quarter, I'm afraid. But I'm still very good at guessing; I guessed right... five out of six times, I think, on the last quiz, which turned a potential 70 into a 95. Now, if only I could do that with the lotto. ^_^

Tomorrow I want to go downtown with spazzkat to this nice tea place that I've been by briefly but not actually in, and also to stop at a new store in Westlake which my Japanese tutor recommended. But I'll have to get my lab notes done first, in the morning, and also get Zoe's cage cleaned up, and some other crap like that, mostly because I don't want to be up late working on lab homework. (The lab schedule this quarter, despite meeting at the same times as last quarter, is very annoying. To wit: Gir.)