Today In Conservative Hypocrisy: But The Children! Edition

There's a J. Crew ad that's been causing some nontroversy of late - a photo of J. Crew's creative director with her preschool-aged son, whose tiny toenails are painted neon pink:

The text reads "Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink.  Toenail painting is way more fun in neon."

Well, the usual suspects have been up in arms over this.  She's ruining him!  She'll turn him gay!  By the feminizing power of pink and nail polish, she's gender-confusing him!  Blah blah etc.  The gay agenda is at work here, whatever.

And then there's the recent, and growing, pushback from the self-proclaimed morality police against anti-bullying programs that try to teach kids not to beat up gay/trans/perceived-non-gender-conforming kids.  Gay agenda!  Indoctrination!  Brainwashing!  Alarmist nonsense!

I also distinctly remember a hue and cry when some same-gender couples in California brought their kids to anti-Prop H8 protests.  It was "shameful" that us pervs would "use our children this way".  No links, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers it.

So why are the bigots, who are so keen to label participation of young'uns in pro-gay and pro-equality movements as this horrible brainwashing abuse we're perpetuating on the innocent behbehs, okay with things like Peter LaBarbera's Youth Hate Camp?  And why has there been no terrible outcry against these fucknuggets, who have filed about 50 lawsuits against various school districts across Ohio, Kentucky, Florida, and other southern states, for banning t-shirts saying things like "God Hates Whores." and "God Hates Muslims Gays.", when they made their daughter wear those shirts to school?  That's a couple who is outright using their daughter to push their hateful right-wing agenda by making her wear controversial slogans and face punishment from her school administrators in order to give them cause to start another lawsuit.  I eagerly await the disavowal and condemnation from Faux News and One Million Moms, over this shameful example of brainwashing and exploitation of a child for a degenerate cause.

Bueller?  Bueller?


...*crickets*

Yeah.  That's what I thought.

I Got Your Theocracy Right Here

or, The Religion Clause Means Nothing To These People.

The Texas textbook dustup last year ended with the Texas Board of Education adopting new textbook standards that emphasize the role of conservative and Christian organizations/people like Phyllis Schlafly and the NRA in American history, stress the superiority of American capitalism, remove Thomas Jefferson as one of the philosophers to study (not Christian enough, y'know; he was replaced with several Christian theologist/philosophers), and require "teaching of “the importance of personal responsibility for life choices” in a section on teenage suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders."  Abused by your partner?  Take responsibility for your life choices!  >.<  It was widely seen as conservatives attempting to rewrite history - or, if you listen to their version, "correcting bias."  Damn history, all liberal and shit.

One of the things the new standards required, apparently, was emphasis on the phrase "the laws of nature and nature's god" in the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Now take a look at the following clip.



[A panel discussion in a large college classroom; three white men and a white woman sit behind the table at the front of the room.  The woman, Cynthia Dunbar, is speaking.]  We have a Biblically-illiterate society that does not even know...they're churchgoers only.  I call them CHINOs - Christians in name only.  [audience laughs]  And that's what we have in our society, so that our laws reflect what our underlying worldview is.  That's why we were framed as a nation, on the "laws of nature and nature's God."  One of the things I required in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills education requirement was that they had to learn certain things from our Declaration of Independence, which by the way, textbooks have a shelf life of 10 years, and this will impact nationally, so for the next ten years, the students have to learn the Declaration of Independence, "self-evident truths," "inalienable rights," and "the laws of nature and nature's God." [break]  What are "the laws of nature and nature's God"?  Why did Jefferson pick that term, as opposed to "natural law", which was the Enlightenment/French Revolution standard?  The "laws of nature" are the will of our Maker.  And because of the fallen state of Man, we have to have the laws of nature's God revealed through the Holy Scriptures.

So because we have a "Biblically-illiterate society" full of "Christians in name only", and need "the laws of nature's God revealed through the Holy Scriptures" to combat the "fallen state of Man", Cynthia Dunbar and her compatriots on the Texas State Board of Education felt entitled to rewrite textbook standards to promote their God-centered worldview to every child in the state?  What the unholy fuck?  And I do mean unholy fuck.  What about those who are not even "Christians in name only" but are deliberately and entirely UN-Christian?  Do we need the "laws of [the Christian] god" revealed to us through their scripture, too?

Even if their answer is yes - and I'm sure it would be, with that whole "go forth and make disciples of all nations [whether they want to be disciples or not]" thing - while we're studying America's foundational documents, let's fast forward to the Constitution, Amendment 1, of which the first section reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Given that, using an arm of the government - which education systems funded by the taxpayer's money and run by elected officials certainly are - to promote "Biblical literacy", and defining "the laws of nature and nature's God" as taught in school classrooms as "the will of our Maker...revealed to us through the Holy Scriptures," is a pretty fucking blatant violation of the Constitution, wouldn't you say?

And the only way a person so deeply concerned with making sure the children of this country are accurately educated on our history and founding would be able to overlook such an egregious contradiction...would be if zie genuinely desires Christian supremacy and theocracy. 

This is why I say the Christian Dominionists here in the US scare me more than the boogeyman of Sharia law.  Sharia law is nowhere near becoming reality in this country.  But Dominionists like Cynthia Dunbar are here, they are real, and they are already in power.  And that is truly scary.

Kansas Anti-Choicers Think Women Are Stupid

Kansas governor Sam Brownback (R, of course) has signed two anti-abortion bills today.  They've got the fetal pain law - it's all the rage this season, spring's hottest legislative accessory - banning abortions past 20 weeks, parental consent - both parents, in fact, so if your mom is okay with it and your dad refuses, you're fucked - changing all references to "fetus" in the state's legal code to "pwecious widdle behbeh" *cough* I mean, "unborn child", and narrating the counseling a doctor must provide a patient seeking an abortion to say "[her abortion will] “ter­mi­nate the life of a whole, sep­a­rate, unique, liv­ing human being.”"

I swear, I almost want to get pregnant and go to Kansas for an abortion, specifically so that when they let that bomb drop, I can do my best Macauley Culkin impression and freak the fuck out, all "Omg I had no idea!  You mean it's a human baby?  I thought I was going to have a litter of kittens!  A human being?  Oh, doctor, that changes my mind ENTIRELY!   And knowing that magically changes the financial and social circumstances that brought me in here in the first place, of course."  And then go to the lawmakers who voted for this shit, and the Governor too, and parade my "OMG I had no idea until you were so considerate and helpful as to inform me that I had a human being inside me!" performance all over the legislative offices.  Just to be a pain in the ass and make a spectacle of myself.  Call it performance art.

Really, I don't know what else to say that I haven't said a bazillion times before.  Women know what being pregnant means, and they know what abortions do.  That's *why* they seek them.  Termination of pregnancy is a feature, not a bug, in the abortion process.  Parental consent laws are fucking bullshit - the vast majority of young women who get pregnant *do* tell their parents, and those who don't generally have damn good reasons not to - not to mention, why is it that if she chose to have the baby, her parents couldn't force her to abort, but if she chooses to abort, her parents can override her and force her to have the baby?  Seems a little imbalanced to me.  Either the parents have the absolute right to override their progeny's medical decisions and minors must get permission for every medical decision they make - and yes, carrying a pregnancy to term is a medical decision - or they don't.  And this changing of wording from "fetus", a medically- and legally-defined term, to "unborn child", just for the warm fuzzies of it, is first of all a stupid waste of time and second of all a fucking creepy attempt at language manipulation.  It's like right-wingers use 1984 as a fucking *playbook*.

I was gonna blog about a whole bunch of other stuff today, but life got in the way.  But good news!  My partner is employed again as of Monday!  I'll blog more tomorrow, I promise. 

Until then, go fuck yourselves, anti-choicers.  And my sympathies to the women of Kansas and every other state in which this retrofuck shit has been proposed and/or passed. 

Bryan Fischer Didn't Mean It. Except That He Does.

Remember on Friday, when I posted about Bryan Fischer's horrible "convert or go home" sentiment for Muslim/non-Christian immigrants?  I mentioned at the time that I could only use Right Wing Watch's quotes from the article, as the link to the original wasn't working, almost as if the article had been taken down...

Well, guess what?  It was.  And then it was put back up, but with the offending paragraphs scrubbed and re-written to say the exact opposite of what they originally said.  Where before, Fischer wrote that Muslim immigrants who "insist on clinging to their religion...will need to exercise their freedom of religion in a Muslim country," and that "Someone with a Muslim background who wants to become an American had best be prepared to drop his Islam and his Qur’an at Ellis Island," now it says:

 Does this mean that folks need to convert before they immigrate? No, but at a minimum, it would mean making sure that immigrants to the United States affirm and believe in the superiority of the Judeo-Christian system of values and truth claims over alternative value systems such as sharia law.

Hmm.  That's a nice little logic pretzel you've got yourself in, Fischer/AFA.  First it was that Muslims who wish to immigrate have to convert to Christianity in order to enter, now it's "Do they have to convert?  No, but..."  And that nasty little "but" in there leads to a sentence I'm still trying to extract a coherent meaning from.  They don't have to convert...but they do have to believe in the superiority of euphemistically-phrased "Judeo-Christian values"?  You don't have to convert, but you do have to believe my religion is superior before I'll let you in my clubhouse.  How incredibly asinine.  Also, can you stop with the "Judeo-Christian" euphemism?  We all know you mean fundamentalist Christianity.  You're only adding "Judeo" on there to make it look a little less sectarian, and it's not fooling anyone.

Since this is the third time so far this year that the AFA has had to take down and scrub Fischer's articles (the other two times were for claiming Native Americans "deserved" colonization and nearly being wiped-out for not converting to Christianity, and for criticizing welfare programs as promoting African-American families who "rut like rabbits"), perhaps they should, I dunno, stop giving him a platform to spew his bullshit from?  Let him get his own damn blog like the rest of us, where he can be one more ranty bastard in the sea of ranty bastards that is blogging, without having the title of Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association and the media reach that goes with it.  After all, these censorings aren't going to stop him.  Bryan Fischer means every word he writes [link goes to video of Fischer pontificating].  If the AFA isn't willing to stand by that, it's time to cut him loose like the offensive, loose-cannon liability he is.

What Trigger Warnings Are Not

Trigger warnings are not censorship.

Trigger warnings are not "keeping you from speaking your truth."

Trigger warnings are not "stifling your free expression."

Trigger warnings are not about you not saying things.  They are about how you say things.  They are about courtesy, by giving people a chance to prepare themselves for potential consequences if they read what you go on to say.  They are about compassion and concern for your fellow beings.  They are about giving other people the option to look away, instead of shoving painful stuff in their face with no warnings.  They are about giving other people the right to make an informed choice about what they can handle in that moment and trusting them to make their own decisions, instead of making the decision for them. 

I have not always been the best at remembering to add TWs to posts here.  For that, I apologize.  It's a reflection on my privilege that I don't *have* to always remember what to put warnings on.  I am trying to do better with it.  Again, if my forgetfulness has hurt anyone, I'm sorry.

I just wanted to post this because a women's spirituality community that I spend a fair amount of time on had a bit of a dustup last month about diet/weight-loss threads being triggering to people with disordered eating pasts.  And we discussed trigger warnings, and a few people said things like "Well, I'll try to add TWs since you say it would help, but I won't let it stop me from speaking my truth here!  I won't censor myself.  Etc."  And I know the issue has come up before, but I wanted to do my part to clear up the misunderstanding a lot of people seem to have about what trigger warnings are...and what they aren't.

Speak your truth.  Don't censor yourself.  Say what you want and need to say.  But if it's a graphic description of how depression feels, or your experiences of sexual violence, or the eating disorder you struggle with, etc...put a goddamn trigger warning on it out of courtesy to the people around you.

That is all.  Carry on.

Bryan Fischer's Biblical Immigration Policy: Convert or Go Home

Bryan Fischer hates Muslims.  A lot.  Let's just make this clear upfront, no matter how much the fuckwad tries to deny it, he really, really, really, really, really hates Muslims. 

So this isn't surprising, exactly, but it is absolutely over-the-top, a new low even for Fischer (if you'll pardon the mixed metaphors).  To quote from the RWW post (since the actual link to Fischer's original article seems to be broken *cough* as if it's been pulled, like several of his other pieces lately):

We believe in freedom of religion for Muslims like we do for everybody else. But if they insist on clinging to their religion, they will need to exercise their freedom of religion in a Muslim country which shares their values...Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and our policy should be to admit to our shores only those with a commitment to a full assimilation to American culture, adopting our faith, our heroes, and our history. Someone with a Muslim background who wants to become an American had best be prepared to drop his Islam and his Qur’an at Ellis Island.

Shorter Bryan Fischer: "Freedom of religion means you have the freedom to follow my religion, or GTFO!"

And yet again I wonder, does he even realize that, ahem, not everyone in America is Christian?  He lists  "adopting our faith" as a requirement of immigration, but see, "we" don't have a singular faith.  America is like three-quarters Christian or so, but that still leaves an awful lot of people practicing faiths other than Christianity.  And even within Christianity it's not like they're the most homogenous bunch, with Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, etc all having amazingly divergent views and practices, given they're all functioning from the same basic premise.  So what is this "our faith" he's referring to? 

It leaves me with the nasty feeling that Fischer quite genuinely doesn't see non-Christian Americans as Americans.  I may not be a particular fan of my country, of late, but at present it's the only one I've got, and I'd like it if politicians would stop schmoozing with and lending legitimacy to a demagogue who gives me the impression that, if he thought he could get away with it, he'd be calling not only for deportation and forcible conversion of Muslims, but every other non-Christian group in this country.

Also, there was this neat-o little quote in the article that caught my attention... (emphasis mine)

It’s simple: don’t break the law (that is, come in through the front door instead of breaking in through a window), convert to Christianity, fully assimilate (become an authentic American, not a hyphenated American), and support yourself.

So if you qualify your American identity with any other identity reflecting your ethnicity or national origin or any other marker that's important to you, you too are not to be considered a Real American™.  There is only one kind of American, according to Fischer: the WASP.  And all the rest of us need to GTFO their country.

It makes you wonder what it will take for the AFA to finally come to their senses and drop Fischer.  They wonder why the SPLC labeled them a hate group?  They should try reading their Director of Issues Analysis' blog sometime.

Today In Anti-Choice Hypocrisy

When a Wichita, Kansas doctor planned to begin offering abortion services in her clinic, the landlord sued to stop her, on the grounds that the protests held and security risks posed by Wichita-based zealots Operation Rescue [the Fetuses and Who Gives a Fuck About the Women?] would be disruptive to the building's other tenants.  To stop the suit and appease the landlord (and other tenants, who had supposedly told the landlord they would terminate their leases if the clinic began doing abortions, to avoid dealing with protesters outside the building), Dr. Means agreed not to provide abortions.  The Religious Reich, of course, declared this a grand success and were very smug about it. 

And yet, when a library director in Wisconsin cancelled a 40 Days for Lies Life group's planned showing of an anti-abortion film at the county library, because he was afraid pro-choice groups would protest and the showdown would interrupt normal library functions...the group whined to the county, and when the county stood behind the library director's decision and instead offered an alternate space for their showing, they sued to force the library to allow their showing to go as planned.  The library has since backed off and allowed the group's reservation of the showing room to be reinstated.

So when a pro-choicer is forced to stop or refrain from doing something because of threat of pro-life protests, that's awesome and a victory.  But when an anti-choice group is forced to stop or refrain from doing something because of threat of pro-choice protests, that's grounds for a lawsuit.  Have these fucking meat nuggets ever even heard of the concept of fairness and equal treatment?

If they have, they're sure as fuck not showing it.  Anti-choicers are absolute fucking bullies.  And that, my friends, is why they're winning.  They're willing to stoop to any low.  Any tactic, no matter how extreme, is on the table, if they think it might achieve their goals, while we stand on principle and try to do the right thing. 

How can we win, against utter unprincipled extremism, unchecked by any sense of self-awareness or human decency?  I really don't know.

That Same Day On All The Other Streets

Some shitball in Texas has introduced an amendment in the budget process that would require any state-funded university which maintains a "gender and sexuality center or other center for students focused on gay, lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, transsexual, gender questioning, or other gender identity issues" to spend an equal amount on a "family and traditional values center". Those uppity queer students, trying to have places where they can focus on their issues without being shouted over by heteronormative, gender-policing society!  Why, it's just like the reverse discrimination of Black History month and Women's History month and gay pride parades! 

I think the best response here to quote the sometimes-disturbing, often-brilliant A Softer World comic (click the image to enlarge):

Comic reading, in three panels, over a backdrop of photos of a ferris wheel: I don't understand your complaint./There totally is a straight pride march./That same day, too. On all the other streets.

Look, 'phobes, I know you're scared.  But there's no need to be.  We're not trying to eradicate "traditional values" entirely or anything.  You're welcome to them if you want them.  We just want a space to be ourselves alongside without coercive attempts to remold us in the image you want, and currently, that means having our own centers dedicated to our issues.

If you *really* want to make LGBT/gender centers obsolete, you could always try overturning our culture's heteronormativity and gender-policing and transphobia, and then we wouldn't need them anymore.  Sadly, forcing your little "traditional values centers" on people is actually just going to exacerbate the issue and make our centers stick around a lot longer to combat the damage you're doing.

Suit yourself.  Asshole.

Turns Out, Army Chaplains *Not* The Unprofessional Crybabies DADT Repeal Opponents Made Them Out To Be

Spoiler alert: the conservatives were wrong again!

CNN had a brief article the other day about the Army chaplain corps working on training in preparation for DADT repeal to go into effect.  I'm sure y'all remember the claims made by anti-gay bigots during the DADT repeal fiasco, that it would cause chaplains to be unable to exercise their religion and thus abandon the service en masse, right?  Well, guess how many chaplains have applied for voluntary separation, now that they're actually training them in how to appropriately counsel and help openly LGB soldiers?

None.  That's right, not a single one, according to the spokesman for the chaplain corps.  Apparently one did ask for separation before the training began, but since it has, not a single one has asked to leave.  Further, no endorsing organizations (military chaplains must be endorsed by a religious group in order to qualify for service as a chaplain, it seems) have threatened to pull their endorsements, which would force their endorsed chaplains to leave the service.  The Army chaplain corps has some 2,900 members, and out of that, precisely ONE has left since the repeal bill was signed.

The CNN article is sprinkled with quotes about how the chaplains are basically shrugging and going about their business, already being fairly used to counseling and ministering to members of diverse faith groups, and not seeing this as much of an issue.

Looks like FRC underestimated the maturity and coping capacity of military chaplains.  But that's not much of a surprise.  I'd hope they're used to being wrong by now; they have so much practice at it, after all.

On Patriotism and Tax Burdens

I have a question for the fuckweasels who sneer about Real Americans™, and call liberals and progressives "unpatriotic" and "anti-American" for failing to sufficiently genuflect before the golden calf of American Exceptionalism:

In a time where gigantic multinational corporations like GE and Bank of America pull in billions of dollars of profit and pay not one motherfucking red cent in taxes - indeed, they receive tax benefit! $3.2 BILLION for GE, and $1 billion for BofA - while funding for social services is being drastically slashed for "lack of funds" in the federal government, why the fucking fuck should I be patriotic?

I'm dead fucking serious.  What loyalty should I have for a country that slaps an unemployed woman - a close friend of mine who's been working temp jobs on and off when they're available while looking for steady work and scraping by on unemployment for over a year now - with an additional $14,000 in taxes, while letting multi-billion-dollar corporations practically draw a fucking salary from the taxpayers?  What love should I have for a country the vast majority of whose elected officials are wholly owned subsidiaries of the Koch Brothers, and who are thus working hard to pass laws that will further benefit corporations and the top 1% and the expense of everyone fucking else? 

I'm so fucking over this patriotism bullshit.  Boehner and the GOP have made it clear they hate me, as a woman and as a pregnancy-capable person.  The Religious Reich has made it clear that they hate me, as a woman, a pregnancy-capable person, and a queer person.  My so-called "fierce advocate", our so-called "feminist" president who I worked to help elect and voted for with great joy and enthusiasm, can't be arsed to speak so much as a token word in my defense, when he's not outright undercutting efforts to combat the aforementioned hatred.  "My" party, the Dems, have proven themselves utterly inept even with a near-supermajority in BOTH FUCKING HOUSES of Congress - see: the health insurance "reform" fiasco.  This country has a disgusting history of oppression, genocide, imperialism and colonialism, all of which goes mostly-unacknowledged in public schools because anytime someone tries to get accurate - read: less than glowingly positive - American history taught, conservatives & the privileged rush in screaming about reverse discrimination and "indoctrinating" children to hate America.  The entire tax system is basically set up to allow the rich as many loopholes as possible, while squeezing the poor of what little they have.  Republicans held the government goddamn well hostage in order to extend the Bush tax cuts - AND OBAMA COMPLETELY FUCKING FAILED TO STAND UP TO THEM ON IT - so that the superrich could keep even MORE of their obscene gobs of money, while the rest of the country is struggling through a full-on Depression. 

Conservatives like to talk about the USA like we're God's gift to the planet.  Being insufficiently patriotic and proud of our country is a kiss of death to a political campaign - remember the furor over Michelle Obama's infamous quote, "This is the first time I've been really proud of my country" or whatever the fuck it was she actually said?  But really, why are we supposed to feel this way?  Because of our conceit that we're the ones who came up with this whole freedom-and-democracy concept?  We didn't, by the way; we got it from the Greeks.  That's the only possible explanation I can come up with.  And it's not even accurate!  Oh!  Maybe it's our gigantic military cock we like to swing around all over the fucking place?  I think I'll go with that one.  Sadly, while it's vaguely impressive in sheer numbers, it's impressive in the way that a guy who has a gigantic truck with all kinds of bells and whistles he doesn't need is "impressive" - the truck makes you go "Whoa...I wonder what he's compensating for?"

Face it, fellow Americans: our country is not all that special, unless you count a spectacular degree of insularity and insufferable self-righteousness as "special".  We've got potential, sure, but we're squandering it, over and over, pissing it away in our headlong rush into the most tightly concentrated oligarchy possible. 

I'm staying, for the time being - not least because I can't afford to move, much less the costs of an international move - and while I stay, I will do everything I can to make this country - and the world - a less fucked-up place.  But I am beyond done with this whole "patriotism" shit.  You want my loyalty back, USA?  Force the corporations to pony up their fair share of dough to take care of this country they so happily exploit, so some of the tax burden can come off the middle and lower class.  It makes no sense to ask the struggling among us to carry the heaviest load, assholes.  And if the smartasses coasting on everyone else's work would step up, they wouldn't have to.  Get that sorted out, go back from being a government of, by, and for the corporations into a government of, by, and for the people...and we'll talk.

This rant brought to you by tax season and ridiculously unfair tax burdens.