Culture Warriors category archive

According to Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, rape is God’s work.

I realized during the night that “Pro-Life” is not about “Life.”

It’s about sperm.

It’s about conquest.

It’s about the belief that, if a man plants a successful little swimmer, it must be preserved and revered above all else, because, by God, it’s a man’s.

All the rest is poppycock.

Bring on the stupid, but don’t post that work of art edition.

Truly vile people.

Via Raw Story.

Robert A. Brown laments our creeping creepy scientific illiteracy:

Most modern problems involve scientific observations and some theory. A scientist can be hired to advise, but she probably won’t be understood, and faith-based prejudices often win.

When over half congress doesn’t believe in Evolution (from a Pew survey), intelligent discussion on: genetic heritage, Genome research, definition of life, global warming, economic theories, and much more is simply not possible. Democracy fails.

When nearly half of college students in the US South and bible-belt Midwest are not sure that the earth revolves around the sun (Natl. Science Found. study), they can’t be sure that the globe is warming.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., comments on the Taliban’s attack on a 14-year old school girl for the crime of wanting to be included in society, and sees parallels:

There are two reasons this story (of the shooting–ed.) crossed the ocean. The first is that it is appalling. Human garbage does not get much ranker than a man who boards a school bus to kill a child. The second is that it is recognizable, that we see in their mad religious and ideological fundamentalism ghostly shadows of our own.

Granted, the outspoken child in this country is not in particular danger of physical violence from religious or ideological zealots. But the abortion doctor is. The gay couple are. The Muslim American is.

Fundamentalism is fundamentalism wherever it breeds, always the same dark stain of unbending literalism, always the same shrill claim that it guards the one true path to enlightenment, always the same crazed insistence that the one unforgivable crime against faith, the one inexcusable heresy of ideology, is to ask questions.

In my local rag, Daryl Lease offers you a chance to guess what response House Republicans have given to various statements about scientific topics. Here’s a sample:

During a discussion of global warming, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher mused:

A) “You know, some of this heat could be from the pit of hell.”

B) “If we do something about warming, are we imposing an unfair regulatory burden on suntan lotion companies?”

C) “We don’t know what those other [warming] cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence, you know, or who knows?”

Follow the link for the answer and for the rest of the quiz.

Remember, if God didn’t believe in evolution, he wouldn’t have given us Carbon-14 dating.

Devastating.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Arthur Dobrin points out that

In this most religious country in the Western world, Americans know little about anyone’s religion, even their own. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released the results of their 15-question quiz, answered by 3,412 randomly sampled individuals and reveals how ignorant Americans are about religion.

Take the quiz and see how you do. My results under the fold.

Read more »

Via Bartcop.

I have a gut reaction to Liberty University. And it’s a decidedly negative one.

It was started to indoctrinate students with Jerry Falwell’s version of Christianity, which I find (to use Falwellian terminlogy) decidedly un-Biblical, insofar as Christianity is supposed to be based on the Gospels, rather than on Leviticus. (I feel the same way about Regents, Pat Robertson’s outfit, just down the road. They are in the tradition of Bob Jones and Oral Roberts Universities–designed to wash brains, not nurture them indoctrinate students in a particular politico-religious ideology, with an accent on the politico.)

Nevertheless, I commend the students for greeting the Donald’s Gospel of Revenge with silence.

It may not be what Jesus would do, but billionaire developer and reality TV star Donald Trump counseled students Monday at the Falwell family’s Liberty University not to turn the other cheek but to “get even” with adversaries.

In a speech where he also called President Barack Obama “a Teflon president” who seems to win favorable press coverage no matter the circumstance, Trump counseled Liberty students to “get even” with those who wrong them in business.

“I always say don’t let people take advantage – this goes for a country, too, by the way – don’t let people take advantage. Get even. And you know, if nothing else, others will see that and they’re going to say, ‘You know, I’m going to let Jim Smith or Sarah Malone, I’m going to let them alone because they’re tough customers,” said Trump . . . .

He also recommended that the students get pre-nups when they marry.

Via C&L, which adds commentary.

Gina Barreca poses a question to Romney and Ryan:

“We will honor you, our fellow citizens, by giving you the right and opportunity to make the choice.”

That is exactly what Republican candidate for vice-president Paul Ryan said in his speech this morning: he emphasized the need for America to take back its right to choose.

Americans, he implied, know what’s best for ourselves. We are a smart and responsible people. We want the government off our backs and out of our wallets, Paul Ryan’s message implied.

Isn’t it right to assume that, if we want the government out of off our backs and out of our wallets, we’d also want the government out our wombs, away from our cervices, and out of our vaginal area generally?

B-b-b-b-but, in Wingnut World, wimmens is different.

If one picture is worth 10,000 words, what price two?

Via Contradict Me.

Via Contradict Me.

Their fanatics meet our fanatics.

McClatchy:

An Ivy League scholar and mother-of-two is touching a raw nerve by questioning whether high-flying career women with families, at least American ones, can truly “have it all.”

Writing in The Atlantic magazine, Anne-Marie Slaughter cited her own downshift from powerful State Department official to mere Princeton University professor as evidence that they cannot, at least not as US society now stands.

Notice how no one ever wonders why men can’t have it all?

It’s because men expect to have it all by birthright. And by and large get away with it.

I’ll give you an example:

I had stayed home with my sick son. The next day, the boss, who had raised two sons after a nasty divorce from a nasty man, called me into her cubby and asked, “Why have you been missing so much time to stay home with your kid?”

“My wife said to me, ‘Why should I always be the one to miss work?'”

Boss looked at me for about 15 seconds, then said, “You know, you’re right. Get out of here.”

Best boss I ever had.

At the Guardian, Katherine Stewart considers the attempts of religionists to construe “of” into “for”: to change “freedom of religion”–the right of persons to believe as they will–into “freedom for religions“–the ability of theocratists to bend others to their will under cover of law, that is, to define their freedom of religion to include controlling your beliefs and resulting actions.

Also, RICO.