Southern Baptists Kick Out a Church

The Southern Baptist Convention voted to break its 125-year-old ties to Broadway Baptist Church, a Fort Worth congregation. Broadway allowed its homosexual members to appear in the church directory. Rather than allow same-sex family pictures, the church did away with all family photos and used only candid shots of all church members. Well, the SBC said a speedy adios to the church, claiming Broadway had violated its principles by acting to "affirm, approve or endorse homosexual behavior." Broadway maintains that it is "in friendly cooperation" with the SBC.

Um, when did the SBC become the Pope? The whole deal with Protestants is that you get to interpret the Bible for your own self and that individual congregations are not beholden to any higher authority (other than God/Jesus, of course). The SBC is supposed to be spreading the Good News, but they just keep getting smaller and smaller. Maybe it's time to rethink the rigidity? Just a little?

Remember, Jesus was peeved with the Pharisees because they were too rigid with the rules (Matthew 12:10-14):

¹⁰And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? that they might accuse him.

¹¹And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?

¹²How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days.

¹³Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other.

¹⁴Then the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how they might destroy him.

Albanian Muslims of the Holocaust

Little known fact: There were more Jews in Albania after WWII than before it. Nearly every Jew in Albania survived the holocaust. Albania is a majority Muslim country and Jews found safety with the Muslims (70% of population), Orthodox Christians (20%), and Catholics (10%) of Albania.

Sarah Palin is Wacky & Tacky

From the Vanity Fair profile of Sarah Palin:

More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin's extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of "narcissistic personality disorder" in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-"a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy"-and thought it fit her perfectly. When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig's condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God's, and signed it "Trig's Creator, Your Heavenly Father."

(via Slog)

Iranian Stereotypes

Andrew Sullivan quotes an Iranian:

I remember September 11, 2001. I remember watching TV all day worried and sad. I remember holding candlelight vigils with my friends for the victims. Then George W. Bush went on to declare us as one of the “Axis of Evil.” I remember asking myself, “Why?” Not a single one of the terrorists was Iranian, and I wondered why he didn’t bother to make a distinction between the government and the people. In fact, in all of the Middle East I don’t think there is a more pro-American nation than Iran, but no one made such a distinction. Consequently, the Iranian people were viewed with an aura of suspicion in every airport and embassy around the world for the rest of the Bush administration.

But all of that unfounded negative stereotyping came to an end when, in the aftermath of the elections, the nation stood up to the manipulative authorities and separated its account from that of the government. We shattered the stereotype with the amateur photos and videos taken with our own mobile phones. We captured the true picture of the Iranian nation and relayed it to the world, a picture of a young and highly educated nation yearning to be free.

Michael

Gay Exorcism

Hearing Over Sight?

Think you'd rather be deaf than blind? Some scientists argue that our hearing is more impressive than our sight. You can detect 20-beeps-per-second as a discontinuous series of tones. 20-frames-per-second is a moving picture, not stop-motion photography. Also, we are pretty much the only animal that loves music. Even monkeys prefer silence over music, but babies love music and no known human culture has existed without music.

Innovative Orphanage

A Tanzanian orphanage has taken an innovative approach to dealing with the many orphaned infants, who often follow their mothers to the grave, due to lack of medical care and nutrition. These children are not put up for adoption, nor do they spend their entire childhood in the orphanage. They stay until their 2nd or 3rd birthday, cared for by workers and "bintis." A binti is a female relative who comes to live & care for the child at the orphanage. This allows the child to bond with a permanent caregiver, and it also allows the binti to receive education she otherwise would not. The Berega Orphanage is small, caring for only 20 or so infants and toddlers -- a tiny drop in the sea of 50 million African orphans -- but they are saving lives, one orphaned infant at a time.

Ugly Babies, Dumb Reporters

This is what irritates me about the way psychology is covered in the news. The title of the article is "Is an Ugly Baby Harder to Love?" It starts out suggesting that moms may love their infants more if they're pretty. The evidence? Women--moms and non-moms--looked at pictures of "flawed" infants (those with cleft palates, etc.) for shorter periods of time than did men & both looked at pretty babies longer than "flawed" babies. Granted, they offer alternative explanations, but most people will read the title & nothing else, or stop after the first few paragraphs, going away with the notion that mothers care for and love their prettier infants more than their less-than-perfect infants. Dumb.

Turkish-Armenian Relations

Turkey & Armenia continue to work towards normalizing their relationship, but some see Turkey as taking a step back by suggesting that opening the borders will require Armenia to cease occupation of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan.

However, Armenia's former foreign minister, Vartan Oskanian, says that Armenia has "lost the battle," by allowing Turkey to determine when and how the border will be opened while gaining nothing in return.

Protecting Cambodian Americans

A touching story about the community of Rochester, which rallied around the Rochester Cambodian Buddhist community after their temple was vandalized. The paper ran an editorial condemning the act & educating the public about the suffering of Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge.

Abuse at Bagram

Apparently, we told some detainess, "Sorry," after holding them for 5 years. That was nice of us.

Scientology & Abuse

The St. Petersburg Times is running a three-part special on Scientology, based on interviews with 4 disgruntled and former top-ranking Scientology officials. Among the allegations: physical abuse by superiors. The 4 former officials certainly do not paint themselves as saints in this, admitting to beating subordinates and lying about it to the public.

Who Would You Enlist?

Play Who Would You Enlist on PBS and see if your recruitment standards are in line with Uncle Sam. Sam & I agreed on 3 of the 8 enlistees.

Khamenei Criticizes Britain

"Singling out Britain, and not the “great Satan” of the United States, so often the bugaboo for Iran’s leadership since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, might seem an odd choice for Iran’s supreme leader, when the government he leads faces its greatest crisis in 30 years." (NYTimes)

DNC losing LGBT support

More prominent gay supporters are boycotting the DNC LGBT fundraiser to express their anger over the Justice Department defense of DOMA.

Obama & the Gays

Hey, Obama! Stop being a doofus about gay rights. They are peeved and so am I.

Tehran University Professors Resign

From Sullivan, one of his readers translated a Farsi website, which stated that 119 Tehran University faculty resigned to protest the attacks on the dorm rooms last night. They have asked for the resignation of the president of the University for failing to protect his students.

Khamenei Reversal?

After twice declaring the Iranian presidential election results valid, Ayatollah Khamenei ordered an investigation into election fraud.

A message from Iranian police to students: Don't protest.



(Door in an Iranian dorm room)

Westboro Baptist

Are these people for real?

Chaos in Tehran

Guns in Church!

On June 27, bring your guns to church! New Bethel Church in Louisville is having a bring your gun to church day, because, "without a deep-seeded belief in God and firearms . . . this country would not be here." Brilliant.

Socialist America

Not so much.

Torture

Lifted from John Schwenkler (via Sullivan):

Pretty stupid, apparently. I’m sure that this line of “thought” has been picked apart plenty of times in the anti-torture blogosphere, but Newt deserves a fisking of his own:

… waterboarding is not torture. Waterboarding has been routinely used to train American pilots in the military to understand what interrogation techniques they might encounter.

By extension:

• Having sex with a woman is not raping her. Sex is routinely had between men and women as an expression of love and a means to pleasure and procreation.
• Punching a man in the face is not assaulting him. Men routinely punch one another in the face in the boxing ring as a test of athletic prowess.
• Driving 75 miles an hour on a residential street is not speeding. Cars routinely drive 75 miles an hour or more on the highway.

Education Gap Continues

Given that the education gap arose over 20 years ago, shouldn't there be more women in high power positions?

Miscarriage

Andrew Sullivan has been posting many readers' emails of their personal stories involving abortion. He is pro-life, but has been posting many stories that fall solidly in the grey area -- including women who chose to end pregnancies that would have threatened their lives, wishing they had ended pregnancies that resulted in an infant who lived only a few, painful days, or being glad they chose to continue an impossible pregnancy. One woman who wrote in said that her family practically disowned her when she terminated in ectopic pregnancy. Another woman wrote in rightly arguing that ectopic pregnancies are virtually impossible to carry to term or even to viability. This woman then argues that miscarriage and the emotional pain associated with it deserves more recognition in society, particularly among anti-abortion advocates. Here are her words:

Women who have miscarriages are the great silent minority in America. It's not acknowledged. Many people don't understand why I sank into a deep depression after mine. To many pro-life advocates it's only a baby if it's aborted by man. If God aborts it, they simply don't care.

Virgin Rape Myth

There is a dangerous myth in Zimbabwe that men will be cured of HIV/AIDS if they have sex with a virgin. This advice -- given by some traditional healers -- is one reason behind rapes. These rape victims are often young girls. CNN briefly profiles a child-rape survivor (now age 37) who has been fighting against this abuse. Due to threats on her life, she now lives in the UK.

Watch out for bad cocaine!

Andrew Sullivan on Gay Rights, Obama, & Cheney

I love Anderson Cooper...I don't even begrudge him his glass closet.

Gibbs is funny

I think Gibbs is funny. So does the press corps, apparently. Somebody actually counted the number of times laughter happened during press briefings. Here are the numbers, for the first 4 months of press briefings:

Robert Gibbs: 600+
Dana Perino: 57
Scott McClellan: 66
Tony Snow: 217


Of course, I think Gibbs also thinks he's pretty funny. That number includes when he laughs and when the press corps laughs. If you watch the video in the link above, you'll see quite a few where he appears to be the only one laughing...

Sotomayor and the race card

The headlines say that Sotomayor is a "reverse racist" or whatever.

Thankfully, somebody actually bothered to look at her record. He concludes that she rejects discrimination-related claims by a margin of at least 8-to-1. Here is an example of one of her dissenting opinions, where she supported a claim of discrimination:

"In Pappas v. Giuliani, 290 F.3d 143 (2002), she dissented from the majority’s holding that the NYPD could fire a white employee for distributing racist materials."

So, you know, it's a little hard to argue that she's all preoccupied with race because she's Hispanic.

Beware the Flip Flop!

Every summer they have a story about how bad flip flops are for you. No arch support, you can break a leg if you try to run in them, if you mow in them you could cut your toe off (OK, you're a dumb dumb if you mow in flip flops), they can cause back pain.

OH WELL! I love my flip flops. So there.

Dr. Tiller shot dead....O'Reilly to blame?

Dr. Tiller, an abortion provider in Kansas, was shot and killed at his church on Sunday.

Dan Savage, Daily Kos, & Andrew Sullivan are pointing fingers at Bill O'Reilly for painting a target on Dr. Tiller's back.

On the one hand, O'Reilly does repeatedly discuss Tiller and refer to him as the Baby Killer (29 segments worth). However, if you really view abortion as murder, then loudly protesting and bringing attention to the matter is completely valid. He doesn't say, "This guy should be dead." I'm not fan of Bill O'Reilly, but I don't think we can blame him for every single nutjob out there.