teach your children well

I was having a discussion recently about whether or not a politician's religion affects how they make policy decisions. Should I really worry about Mike Huckabee, fundamentalist Baptist minister who believes in a 6000 year old Earth and disbelieves in evolution, becoming President? What impact might his religion have on MY life?

Let me give you a concrete example of how the religion of current governor of Texas (a state I do not live in) may soon affect my life.

The current governor of Texas is a fundamentalist who believes in creationism. He just appointed a creationist to head the Texas State School Board.

Next year, Texas is reevaluating its state science education standards.

Funnily enough, the Texas state science curriculum director just "resigned" (read was fired), because of an uproar created when she forwarded an email to her department announcing an author talk about how creationist politics are behind the push to teach ID in schools. According to those who fired her, this topic doesn't fall under her role of DIRECTOR OF SCIENCE. (read the whole linked article, there's interesting stuff there)

So, just in time to revise the science standards, we have a creationist heading the State School Board, and the anti-creationist science curriculum director is out the door. Handy, no?

Is it remotely possible that when the state science standards are revised, they're going to end up deemphasizing evolution and inflating the possibilities of ID? Most likely, especially since there is a board who works on the standards, but whose recommendations can be accepted or rejected by a single "facilitator" who makes the final decisions (no rules about his qualifications, or any information about how the faciliator is chosen).

Why does this matter, do you ask? Well, Texas and California, two of the most populous states, are unique in that they have State Boards who choose textbooks for the ENTIRE state. In most states, the local districts choose their own textbooks. The textbook publishers, therefore, REALLY want to sell their textbooks in Texas and California (since getting the greenlight from one of those states' boards guarantees huge sales), so the standards of those states are the ones that the textbook publishers most adhere to, in hopes of getting picked up there. So essentially, Texas's standards can affect what gets published in all textbooks.

Since I'm a soon-to-be teacher with a deep respect for the scientific method, who also wants the future generation to understand science, I think the religion of this one governor absolutely affects me.

(Big nod to the Bad Astronomy Blog, where the continuing exploits of Texas creationists and those in other states are fairly regularly tracked.)

germans and georgians

Man, you gotta love the Germans. They are truly hilariously weird people.

A German advent calendar for children has become a hot seller since word got out it has a picture of a notorious serial killer on it.

The cartoon calendar shows Fritz Haarmann, who murdered 24 young men and boys in the 1920s, lurking under a tree with a hatchet next to the door for December 1. Below him, Santa Claus hands out presents to children in a festive-looking Hanover.

A local tourism office included the serial killer alongside 23 other celebrities in the northern city, including philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and hard rock band The Scorpions.

Of course, we have our own weirdos right here in the US. Constitution-violating weirdos.

With no rain in sight, Gov. Sonny Perdue is looking for a little spiritual help to get North Georgia out of its drought.

Perdue's office has begun sending out invitations to a prayer service for rain at the Capitol next week.

"Georgia needs rain. The issue at the heart of our drought problems is a lack of rain," Teilhet said. "And there is nothing the government can do to make that happen.

"The governor recognizes that the request has got to be made to a higher power."

Teilhet said the governor's office has invited spiritual leaders from several faiths and dominations to participate in the service.

Way to illegally waste the taxpayers money!

Also, AJC - you mean denominations. Not dominations. I'm pretty sure no leather-clad dominatrix is going to show up for this prayer service.

swinging a fist

There's a saying that goes something like "Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins."

My high school government teacher used that quote in regards to the Bill of Rights. Your rights are only good until they begin to impenge on someone else's rights.

In the ongoing saga of Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church, the question that inevitably comes up is, "Are we restricting their First Amendment Rights?"

I'm a big fan of the First Amendment. I'm willing to lean pretty far to protect it. Porn, the internet, paparrazi, tabloids, even some hate speech (general hate speech vs. directing, threatening hate speech).

But I also believe in a right to privacy, and a difference between public and private figures. The privacy rights of a public figure, when it comes to people protesting against them, are less than those of a private figure.

First Amendment advocates argue:

"I think when speech is a matter of public concern it still has to be protected, even when by social standards it is extraordinarily rude and outrageous," said UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh.

University of Maryland law professor Mark Graber said the size of the award -- which included $8 million in punitive damages -- could have a chilling effect on speech.

"This was in a public space," Graber said. "While the actions are reprehensible, the 1st Amendment protects a lot that's reprehensible."

While on the flip side:

For Snyder's claim of invasion of privacy to have succeeded, the jury needed to conclude that the church's actions at the funeral -- and later in a Web posting about Matthew Snyder on its site -- were "highly offensive to a reasonable person," according to the jury instructions.

Albert Snyder also claimed that the church's actions were an intentional infliction of emotional distress. Under the law, to find in favor of Snyder, the jury needed to find that the church's conduct was "intentional or reckless."

What was Westboro's intention, if not an "intentional infliction of emotional distress"? If they didn't intend to upset this Marine's family, what were they doing? Essentially, it's an emotional attack, and that's where Westboro's right to swing their fist ends.

If Westboro wants to protest in front of Congress or the White House, protest against public government figures who are actually to blame, that's the First Amendment. But I don't believe that emotionally devestating a grieving family, who have no ties to or control over the issue being protested, is the First Amendment. It's just a fist to the nose.

phelped up

You may remember my rant on Fred Phelps from a few months ago. If not, the good reverend Phelps is the leader of a "church" in Kansas that goes to the funerals of military men and women who have died in Iraq, to jeer and protest. Their reasoning - the deaths of these people are God's punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality. Phelps' church has also praised such natural disasters as the bridge collapse in Minnesota, Hurricane Katrina, and the Utah Mine Collapse. Just so we're all clear - the people whose funnerals Phelps' church was protesting weren't gay - apparently their deaths were just a general warning/punishment to America.

However, I'm happy to report:

A jury on Wednesday ordered an anti-gay Kansas church to pay $2.9 million in compensatory damages to relatives of a U.S. Marine after church members cheered his death at his funeral.

I went to Westboro Baptist Church's website as I was writing the above list of disasters praised by the church, to see if the California wildfires were on the list. To my delight, I discovered that http://www.godhatesfags.com no longer exists! Now, it could be that due to the publicity of the awarding of the damages, the website has been inudated with hits and crashed. I can only hope that the loss of $2.9 million, instead means the church can no longer afford to maintain the most horrifically offensive website I've ever seen.

I'll be keeping an eye on this story as it develops.

ETA: Looks like the $2.9 million was just the start. The judge has awarded another $8 million in punative damages.

This judgement (which they likely can't pay anyway) doesn't appear to have fazed them:

Members of a fundamentalist Kansas church ordered to pay nearly $11 million in damages to a grieving father smiled as they walked out of the courtroom, vowing that the verdict would not deter them from protesting at military funerals.

Members promised to picket future funerals with placards bearing such slogans as "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "God hates fags."

"Absolutely, don't you understand this was an act in futility?" said Shirley Phelps-Roper, whose father founded the Westboro Baptist Church.

The father who brought the lawsuit is absolutely right:

Appearing on NBC's "Today" show Thursday, Sndyer said that while his son was fighting for freedom for Iraqis, "my son did not fight for hate speech.

"And that's basically what it is," he said of the church's protest. "Everybody's under the impression that the First Amendment gives them the right to do anything, say anything any where, any time. And along with the First Amendment also comes responsibility."

phelped off

I like to think that I'm a fairly tolerant individual. There are lot of beliefs that I don't get, and maybe I'll even mock a little, but as long as you're not stuffing them down anyone else's throat or hurting anyone, I think you're pretty much free to think whatever you want. I may not agree with you, but I can usually see how you got there, and I'll let you slide.

Then there are those beliefs that are both fuckin' insane, and ALSO being shoved enthusiastically down as many throats as possible.

We're talking about the Reverend Fred Phelps and his followers at the Westboro Baptist Church. We're talking about a man whose actions are so vile that GEORGE W. BUSH signed a law against them (and that's a man who knows vile actions!).

If you aren't familar with the name Fred Phelps, oh please, let me enlighten you. Some of this might become familar as we go along.

As way of introduction, let me provide the website for the Westboro Baptist Church - http://www.godhatesfags.com/. Beware clicking on the link - seriously. This website is more offensive than pretty much anything else I've seen on the internet, and I once had someone show me German scat porn.

Basically, Phelps and Friends believe that God hates fags. I mean seriously. And not just fags - anyone in any country who remotely "tolerates" fags. According to an article I read on Phelps, this hatred was born when his grandson, as a toddler, was supposedly proposition by a gay man in a park. And Phelps and his Family decided to take revenge on everyone who has ever had the passing thought of "those gays aren't so bad!" Phelps and Friends have been warning America, and America has not listened. And so revenge cometh.

How do they take this revenge? Oh, I'm so glad you asked. One of the primary ways is that Phelps and his followers picket the funerals of soldiers who have died in Iraq. I see you looking confused, so let me clarify. These soldiers are not picketed because they were gay. They didn't have a gay family member, didn't save a gay from a burning building, didn't really have anything to do with being gay at all. So why does Phelps target their funerals? Because God is punishing America for tolerating homosexuality, and the deaths of these soldiers are the evidence.

Did you get that? Did you follow that twisted logic? Let me direct you to a flyer advertising the latest picketing. These pickets are intended as a warning, a punishment, or an "I told you so" - I'm not sure. As I read more around the site, it appears that at some point someone bombed Westboro Baptist Church (I wonder why!), and Phelps attributes this not the action of one person, but as sanctioned by America, as this person was never caught and therefore that means "he knew full well he had complete safety in his attack." So now Americans are being killed by bombs in retaliation by God. I think...

Oh, but it's not just through the war in Iraq that God is punishing America. Links to other pages on Phelps's site have titles that include "Thank God for the Utah Mine Disaster" and "Thank God for Katrina" and "America. A sodomite nation of flag-worshipping idolaters." Most recently, Phelps announced that they would picket the funerals of those who died in the bridge collapse in Minnesota, as the bridge collapsing was an example of God's wrath against Minnesota's tolerance of gays.

Apparently, they didn't show - they were picketing a military funeral instead. At the end of the article, there is a quote from Phelps' daughter - "We've got all the time in the world. You're going to be fishing bodies out of there for weeks. There will be more memorial services and there will be more funerals, and along the way we will pick some of them off."

What a good Christian.

In 2006 Congress passed, and Bush signed, the "Respect for Fallen Heroes" Act, which limits picketing around federally controlled cemetaries. It's pretty rare that one groups actions are so vile, that legislation has to be passed specifically to try to stop them. Westboro Baptist Church issued a "statement" in response. Read through it - it gives Phelps' "story" better than I can possibly sum up, since summing up insane ravings is like trying to get cats to walk in a parade.

I was talking with a friend about Phelps, and trying to come up with a new ephithet to describe him - because there's nothing currently in the English language vile enough. At that point I remembered Dan Savage, and got another, better idea. He and the readers of "Savage Love" gave legislative gay basher Rick Santorum's last name a new definition.

The other night, I emailed Dan Savage to ask him to mobilize his readers to come up with a suitable definition for the verb "to phelp"? It makes such a great verb. "phelp, phelping, phelped." I hope that he accepts the challenge, and comes up with something appropriately and totally gay.

through the looking glass

It says much about where I grew up that this museum is opening about 50 miles from my hometown.

I believe that I am way overdue for a roadtrip.

dinner with Republicans

you know what's scary - having to do math to figure out your own age, because you honestly can't remember what it is. I'm 28, and I think for the last couple of weeks, I've thought I was 27.

I've been thinking about a discussion/argument I had with some family members while I was at home over Christmas.

I have three Republican family members. My cousin, Jamie, is a single, 33 year old UPS driver, who goes hunting on weekends, drives a really big truck, and enjoys NASCAR. He believes government should butt the hell out of most everything, and that includes deciding who can get married and who can get abortions. Quote: "Why the hell should I care if gays get married? It doesn't affect me!"

The other two are my aunt and uncle, who are extremely religious and conservative. They believe Bush is mostly on the right track in Iraq, and have sent me email forwards that advocate that the problems in the Middle East are all the fault of the Jews. Their daughter is a rebel who is currently single, 24, and has two children under 5 and several thousand dollars worth of tattoos, and is on welfare while getting an associate's degree.

During a "discussion" on Christmas Day of the problems of the world, we came to talk about poverty and such. I forwarded the opinion that large corporations who make a huge profit, which mostly goes to shareholders and CEOs, need to be paying their low-level employees a higher wage that will at least get them up above the poverty line (since the poverty line for a family of three is $16,090 (in 2005), and the federal minimum wage of $5.15 (in 2007) equals an income of $10,712 (before taxes)).

My aunt and uncle thought this was ridiculous, that people who can't make enough money should be taken care of through government programs. I said "How can you be Republicans if you believe that the government should be responsible for taking care of people? You understand that Republicans want smaller government and lower taxes, right?" They laughed at me like I had no idea what I was talking about. They then proceeded to tell me that some people just naturally deserve to make more money than other people. When I tried to explain that people who make more money are usually able to do so because they grow up in a naturally advantagous situation (supportive family, educational opportunties, etc), they still insisted that some people are just more deserving, and that corporations don't have to pay people any more than the market requires, and if those people can't get jobs that pay more, then they should just get government help, but they see no problem with the fact that these large corporations can make record profits, but not pay their employees a living wage or provide adequate health care.

My cousin is of the opinion that most people are just lazy and don't work hard enough, but that most people are capable of working and making more money, they just choose not to. As much as his attitude annoys me, I respect it much more than I respect my aunt and uncle's, because at least it shows a recognition that those people are deserving of having more - I told my aunt that I thought her attitude completely lacked humanity, for her to think that some people are just better than others, by accident of birth or situation.

My family often mocks my cousin for his out-there views and his very loud way of expressing them, but I think at the deeper levels, he and I are not so dissimilar - we just have different ways of approaching things. He is, I think, an old-school Republican - the type that believe that less government is better government, and less taxes are better. My aunt and uncle represent the new, neo-con Republicans that have taken over the party in the last 15 years or so, who are extremely religious, morally judgemental and classist.

I know which ones I prefer.

it's the catholic cavalry, come to save us!

Science is astounding us again, and the Church is doing what it can to stop it.

Stem Cell Method Leaves Embryos Viable

Hooray! A major advancement in science that might keep the Christian Right happy. Win-win, right?

“The new technique takes just a single cell from an early-stage embryo and uses it to seed a line of stem cells. The rest of the embryo retains the potential to develop into a healthy human.

Scientists at Advanced Cell devised a clever means of piggybacking on existing fertility treatments to avoid the creation, manipulation or destruction of embryos specifically for the production of stem cells.

The fertility procedure, known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, is used when parents want to avoid having a child with a lethal or severely debilitating birth defect. About 1,000 such procedures are performed each year in the United States.

The new stem cell production method takes a cell extracted during PGD and allows it to divide. One of the two resulting cells is genetically tested as in normal PGD; the other is cultured to encourage the development of stem cells.”

Oh, but wait… Here come the Catholics to save the day.

"’It is widely believed that one cell of a very early embryo may separate and become a new embryo, an identical twin," said Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.”

I’ve got a few questions for you, Richard Doerflinger. As a bishop, how do you counsel your parishioners who are suffering from cancer, strokes, Parkinson’s disease, paralysis? Do you tell them this is all part of God’s Plan, and that we can’t understand why He does what He does? Do you tell them to pray to God for help?

I bet you don’t tell them that science is finding way to help them. Science that was developed through the free will you believe that God gave to man.

When they come to you in their anguish, do you tell them you’re using your influence to block the possible development of a cure? That you believe it is better for them, here and now, to suffer, than to allow the loss of one cell that might possibly, under the perfect conditions, one day become a human? That you and your God revere life so much that you would prefer your followers live in pain, than risk the life of a cell that wouldn’t even exist at all without the science you decry?

moral marketing

in more serious news, an HPV vaccine was just approved. maybe you've heard about it. maybe you've heard it referred to as a "cervical cancer" vaccine. Either way, it's a major advance in women's health, and i'm not in anyway knocking the vaccine. If I could, I'd go get it.

In reality, the vaccine does not protect against all types of cervical cancer. It actually prevents several of the major types of HPV (which leads to cervical cancer), as well as several types of genital warts. it doesn't protect against all types of HPV, so it's not a total cancer vaccine, and the protection against HPV and genital warts are important in their own right, since these STDs themselves have effects beyond being a cause of cervical cancer.

however, if you do a quick "google news" search for "HPV vaccine", you get several small news outlet stories. but a search for "Cervical cancer vaccine," and up pops stories on most of the major news outlets.

I read an article in the RedEye this morning that specfically said that the company putting out the vaccine is marketing it as a vaccine against cervical cancer, not against STDs. Why not? Why not market it as an STD vaccine as well? I think that fear of an STD seems more real to many women than the possibility of cervical cancer. Certainly, many women get HPV and genital warts, but never develop cervical cancer. but the news reports I'm reading treat the fact that it prevents HPV and several types of genital warts like an unimportant side effect. there is still this stigma about STDs, as if it is immoral to protect against STDs (or provide women with birth control).

of course the Christian right it jumping on this, claiming making such a vaccine available promotes sexual activity, and that the best way to avoid HPV and cervical cancer is abstinance. hey, Christian Right, even good Christian women can't always control what skanks their husbands might be sleeping around with.

although, i'm tempted to give the drug company the benefit of the doubt, that they are touting it as a "cancer vaccine" because insurance companies would be more likely to cover it than they would be to cover an STD vaccine. (never mind the arguments about insurance companies and Viagra. that's another rant altogether).