Culture Warriors category archive

Bruce Lowry thinks it will be unrelenting through the campaign season. A nugget:

I don’t mind rational debate on the subject, in light of the release of some edited videos that showed Planned Parenthood officials discussing, sometimes blithely, the use of fetal tissue with individuals posing as representatives for a fetal research organization. The fact that these people were set up by an anti-abortion group with a clear agenda and bent on Planned Parenthood’s destruction notwithstanding, the video clips are difficult to watch.

Yet equally difficult to watch are the lengths to which Republican presidential hopefuls will go to thrash Planned Parenthood, a group that has, for the most part, done an awful lot of good while administering vital reproductive health care services, particularly to low-income women. In that frame of reference, the level of viciousness, even from Governor Christie, is hard to register.

Of course, he is quite wrong in the first sentence of the excerpt. There can be no rational debate about an irrational lie, other than to point one’s finger and say, “That’s a lie.”

Words fail me. Just read it.

. . . by order of the court.

Via Job’s Anger.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette covers the deplorable HPV vaccination rate, which is somewhere under 50%.

Here’s the short version: Parents can’t deal with concept that their kids might have sex,* just like their parents didn’t.

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*This has puzzled me for some time.

Why is it we say, “have sex,” like it’s a cup of coffee and a doughnut, when “sex” (you know, it) is something persons do, like bowling or golf (well, not like golf–sex can be entertaining–let’s say “like pool”)?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Via Raw Story, which has details.

Via C&L.

Tony Norman considers the much-married Kentucky court clerk Kim Davis, her enablers, and their symps, dupes, and fellow travelers. A nugget:

Once again, God was dragged kicking and screaming into the most common of debased religious fantasies — the one that imagines that God is just teeny enough to be reduced to the sum total of one’s own picayune bigotries.

Via Job’s Anger.

Southern Beale suggests that, as regards Kim Davis, many-time married opponent of gay marriage, the discussion is taking place on two different and unrelated levels:

Once again, liberals are arguing a point of logic and fact, while conservatives are arguing hurt fee fees about losing another battle in the culture wars. Look: the fight over gay marriage and the subsequent martyrdom of Kim Davis has zero to do with the Bible. It’s not about religion or theology. Like all culture war issues, it’s about conservatives’ lack of cultural relevance. It’s about how they’ve lost the culture wars and the poor dears just can’t deal with it.

Do please read the rest.

Truth is a concept that the right eschews. Leonard Pitts, Jr., sums it up (emphasis added):

The political right has long had a genius for wrapping noxious notions in code that sounds benign and even noble. The “Patriot Act,” “family values” and “right to work” are fruits of that genius. “Religious liberty” is poised to become their latest masterpiece, the “states’ rights” of the battle for a more homophobic America.

More Pitts at the link.

In related news, Badtux explains “reasonable accommodation.”

Image via Job’s Anger.