Tag: fundamentalist

Oz says “YES” to marriage equality — the fight for human rights continues

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❝ The results of the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey are in. Despite the voluntary nature of the survey, 12,727,920 (79.5%) eligible Australians voted.

By a margin of 61.6% to 38.4%, Australians have said “yes” to the proposition:

Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?

❝ To permit same-sex marriage, parliament must amend the Marriage Act 1961…

The definition of marriage can be simply changed by removing the words “a man and a woman” and replacing them with “two people”.

Such a change will have flow-on effects throughout Australian society. For example, celebrants will be free to officiate at legal wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples. State and territory authorities will be empowered to register same-sex marriages.

❝ Most significantly, same-sex couples will have equality of choice in how they want to formalise relationships. Those who choose to marry will be entitled to the legal benefits of marriage.

This will engage much of the usual anti-democratic sophistry and histrionics beloved of bigots and True Believers. One can only hope that the Australian Parliament will recognize the forward-looking spirit of this poll as meaningful – and predictive of the spirit of voters come the next election.

Most folks hope the bill sorting things out in legalese will be kept simple and to the point. Human rights are for all humans. Spirits in the sky are entitled to have their opinions voiced by folks who believe in such. They have no standing in civil liberties, civil rights.

Rat brained humanoid

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❝ Researchers can grow stem cells into tiny clumps of cells, called organoids, that display similar activity and structure to human brains…Now, though…several labs have inserted those organoids into rat brains and connected them to blood vessels; some of the organoids have even grown physical links with the rat brains.

The aim of this kind of research is noble: to work out how lab-grown clusters of brain cells could be used to understand or even treat brain diseases or injuries. But while a handful of cells in a rat brain may not be a problem now, and the idea of imbuing animals with human characteristics or consciousness seems distant, the integration…is giving some ethicists cause for concern.

❝ That’s especially the case as the number of organoids placed inside a rat’s head increases. “People are talking about connecting three or four,” says Stanford bioethicist Hank Greely to Stat. “But what if you could connect 1,000? That would be getting close to the number of cells in a mouse brain … At some future point it could be that what you’ve built is entitled to some kind of respect.”

Or you could elect them to Congress – most likely as a fundamentalist conservative – and hardly tell the difference.

Obama names an LGBT landmark – Stonewall Inn – as a national monument

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Memorial to Orlando victims outside the Stonewall Inn — Kathy Willens/AP

❝ President Obama is designating a new national monument around the Stonewall Inn, the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement.

The Stonewall National Monument in New York City will be the first addition to the National Park System specifically highlighting the history of the LGBT community.

❝ The monument covers nearly 8 acres in New York’s Greenwich Village including a landmark gay bar, the Stonewall Inn. In June of 1969, patrons at the bar fought back against police persecution — an event that’s widely seen as a watershed in the campaign for LGBT rights.

“Raids like these were nothing new, but this time the patrons had had enough,” Obama said in a White House video announcing the new monument. “So they stood up and spoke out. The riots became protests. The protests became a movement. The movement ultimately became an integral part of America.”…

❝ Designation of the Stonewall monument comes just days before the first anniversary of the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states. It also follows less than two weeks after 49 patrons at a gay bar in Orlando, Fla., were killed in a mass shooting.

Like most advances in civil rights for Americans, religious conservatives recognize the change as somehow limiting their own freedom. A critical point of hypocrisy that unites the politically backwards of America with their peers in history. Fools who believed that hating other human beings on the basis of skin color, religion [or non-religion], where their parents were born, etc., were characteristics that should define full citizenship in the Land of the Free.

Not worthy of much more than contempt.

Christian nutball leader changes End of Days prediction from yesterday to “soon”

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The leader of a Christian group who claimed that the world would end on Wednesday has admitted his prediction was “incorrect”…Chris McCann, head of the eBible fellowship, warned that the planet would be destroyed “with fire” on 7 October. This did not happen.

“Since it is now 8 October it is now obvious that we were incorrect regarding the world’s ending on the 7th,” McCann said.

McCann originally told the Guardian that by Thursday the world would be “gone forever: annihilated”. McCann based his claim on an earlier prediction by Christian radio host Harold Camping, who said the world would end on 21 May 2011. Camping’s forecast also turned out to be incorrect…

In case you didn’t notice.

“…It was surprising that it did not occur. But the comforting thing is that God’s will is always perfect.”…

While the world did not end, McCann said on Thursday it would be obliterated “soon”.

“I also know that God knows exactly when that end will come,” he said. “So we’ll keep studying the Bible to see what we can learn.”

Trying to make decisions about reality based upon a 14th Century book written by a Royal committee requires several levels of logical fallacy. Not that logic or reality has much to do with the whole End of Days delusion.

Kiwi school rousted for intolerant pamphlet — guess where it came from?

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A secondary school in New Zealand has defended using a conservative Christian sex education pamphlet during a health class.

The pamphlet, titled Safe Sex, describes women who have pre-marital sex as “cheap prostitutes” and says unwed couples who live together are “habitual and irresponsible fornicators”…Published by the US-based Bible Baptist Publications, the material also claims “death and hell” await anyone having gay sex…

It was handed out to 15-year-olds during a health studies class at Papanui High School in Christchurch. A mother who complained about the pamphlet says there wasn’t enough context provided in the lesson, something the school has apparently put down to a substitute teacher taking the class.

Headteacher Jeff Smith says the material was used in order to show students an extreme perspective and in no way reflects the school’s own views. “This is a perspective that is out there and they need to be aware of this, so they can then make informed decisions themselves,” Mr Smith is quoted as saying…

So, next week, is he distributing pamphlets endorsing self-flagellation?

The Ministry of Education says it hasn’t received any complaints, but the debate continues to rage online. Some social media users point out that the material may upset gay students or those from single-parent families, and many think it has no place in a classroom setting. “There is zero excuse for exposing children to this hate-filled nonsense,” one user writes on the Stuff.co.nz website. But others support the school’s argument. The pamphlet was used “in the same way one might discuss perspectives of terrorism” or the views of Adolf Hitler, one man writes. “It is an educated mind that considers a point of view without necessarily accepting it.”

From my perspective, once again, Americans are embarrassed by the crap distributed around the world by the sad leftovers of what simply used to be fundamentalist religion. Now led and populated by fools wholly consumed with fear and hatred.

Christian lawyer wants proposal on California ballot to ‘shoot the gays’

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target of bigots

A California lawyer says he wants to legalize the execution of gay people, and there may be nothing the state’s attorney general can do to stop the proposal from moving forward.

Matt McLaughlin, an attorney in Huntington Beach, California, filed paperwork to bring his proposal, which would sanction the killing of gay and lesbian residents on the basis of their sexuality, before voters in November 2016.

The initiative, named the “Sodomite Suppression Act”, is awaiting further review by the office of the state attorney general, Kamala Harris, who does not appear to have the authority to block it. However, the measure is unlikely to reach voters, as the California supreme court can intervene to prevent measures that violate the state constitution from reaching the ballot.

The so-called “shoot the gays” proposal would mandate “any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head, or by any other convenient method”. McLaughlin, a lawyer since 1998, declared in his proposal that it is “better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God’s just wrath”.

The initiative would also make it a crime to support gay rights, punishable by a $1m fine, up to 10 years in prison and expulsion from the state. It would be illegal to distribute “sodomistic propaganda” to “any person under the age of majority”. Being a “sodomite” or distributing “sodomistic propaganda” would disqualify a resident from serving in public office or public employment and from enjoying any public benefit…

This isn’t McLaughlin’s first controversial measure. In 2004, he tried to qualify an initiative…that would have added the King James Bible as a textbook in California public schools…

Aside from the fact he’s a scumbag of the first order, it could be interesting to see how large the idjit vote might be for a bigot-centered proposal like this. He might outpoll the Tea Party.

Creationists get knickers in a bunch over JFK and Carnival Cruise Lines advert

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It’s that special time of the year. The Super Bowl is over, we are still reeling (or happy, if you’re into that sort of thing) over the Worst Play Call In History, and wingnuts have now had a couple days to decide which of the commercials were the evilest and demonic-est of them all.

Ken Ham, that creationist nutbag who debated Bill Nye The Science Guy last year, and who is pretty sure that all nonexistent aliens burn in hell, has made his decision, and the winner of this year’s post-Super Bowl Two Minutes Hate will be Carnival Cruise Lines, who had the utter gall to make a commercial that featured a nice quote from John F. Kennedy, about how we all love the ocean because we used to live there before we lost our gills during Evil-lution. Here is that Kennedy quote, for your handy reference:

“I really don’t know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it’s because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it’s because we all came from the sea — and it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea — whether it is to sail or to watch it — we are going back from whence we came.”

Uh, sorry, John F. Kennedy and fancy boat company, but Ken Ham…responded on his Answers In Genesis website:

Don’t you just feel this “personal connection?” After all, your ancestor came out of the sea and evolved by natural processes to produce you. Blah, blah, blah. RTFA if you think you’re missing anything. They quote whole chunks of this crap and even include the attack upon Neil Degrasse Tyson, to round it up.

So, of course, because Fundamentalist Christian dinguses are all convinced that everyone secretly believes as they do, and because they think they represent the mainstream of their own religion, a few of them took to the Twitter (also created by God, duh) to express their displeasure at the newfound atheism of Carnival Cruise Lines. If you watched the ad above and listened to those words from JFK and you’re not getting how any of that implies that Carnival Cruise lines is an atheist god-hater, that’s because you are not a dumb creationist jackhole like this guy…

Anyway, so John F. Kennedy and a fleet of unsaved boats are the devil, Goddidit, the end.

Once again, fundamentalist True Believers prove to be funnier than most of the commercials on Super Bowl Sunday.

Oh, and BTW, the commercial got it wrong because JFK got it wrong, We’re 0.9% salt, the ocean is 3.5%…