Christian pop culture through the eyes of a radical housewife and part time atheist, Miss Poppy Hussein Dixon. Online since 1995. Stop by every day for the latest in Christian crime, intimidation, fraud, and foolishness.
Karen Bauer, affectionly known as the "lady in the coon skin cap", must be overjoyed at Bush's new conscience clause, which would allow her, as a pharmacist for life, to look down her nose and decide which doctor's prescriptions she will honor, and which she won't, based on her personal religious beliefs.
Afghan police have arrested 10 men for throwing battery acid on 15 girls and teachers as punishment for attending school. Several girls suffered serious burns on their faces.
The men were described as Afghan Taliban militants who came to Kandahar from Pakistan to carry out the attack, the provincial governor said.
The basis for the attacks was religious. The attackers believed Allah does not want women educated.
I'm not a violent person and I must question myself heartily when I find myself empathizing with statements like this, of General Mattis.
You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right upfront with you, I like brawling.
When I see pictures of these schoolgirls I wish for a few minutes alone with the fellows that did this to them. Yet I know that violence is not the answer. The answer is for those girls and their families and communities to find and create their own solutions, and for us to support them in every way we can. These young women are not helpless. They are continuing to go to school.
Painting by Georgia O'Keefe and a Virgin of Guadalupe, both images with a motif reminiscent of female genitals.
The Justice Foundation announced today the "airing" of "Beyond the Dark Valley," a documentary about women who don't want to have babies.
Why can't women have cute euphemisms for their privates, like "Acorn Andy," "trouser trout," or even "John Thomas", instead of the Biblically gloomy ones like "dark valley," or "the valley of the shadow of death"?
Come on, fellas, don't be skeered. Our penises didn't fall off. We were born this way. Believe me, our parts are at LEAST as much fun as yours.
Last Tuesday Republican Congressmen Joe Pitts and Chris Smith issued a news release regarding Arzigul Tursun, an Uyghur Chinese woman rescued in the nick of time by their efforts from the forced abortion of her third child by Chinese authorities.
Excuse me for being skeptical.
First, Arzigul Tursun is the name of "one of the leading Uyghur pop musicians from Kashgar, Xinjiang." You can watch the video from her latest album, Gulyarla, on the YouTube.
Second, we've been down this road before. In 1995 Representative Chris Smith testified before Congress.
Not only do these human rights problems get worse every single month that we continue to truckle to China, but they keep discovering new horrors. ...there are even some credible reports that late-term unborn children are actually being consumed as a new health food.
At the time Congressman Chris Smith was Co-Chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus.
If [capital punishment] isn't enough to turn one's stomach, consider this: According to World... human fetuses have begun to appear on menus of Chinese restaurants as a delicacy and health tonic.
The sensational story of Arzigul Tarsun shares many of the same elements of the Chinese fetus eating story. Though at least one report lists its source as the AP, searches at the AP site yield no results. The only other source is a Radio Free Asia report.
According to Wikipedia, Radio Free Asia "is a private radio station funded by the United States Congress that broadcasts in nine Asian languages." Radio Free Asia is Representative Chris Smith's baby, so to speak. According to a report on Smith's site, he "authored the law to authorize Radio Free Asia to broadcast 24 hours daily." Criticism of Radio Free Asia includes the following, from Wikipedia.
Catharin Dalpino of the Brookings Institution, who served in the Clinton State Department as a deputy assistant secretary deputy for human rights, has called Radio Free Asia "a waste of money." "Wherever we feel there is an ideological enemy, we're going to have a Radio Free Something," she says. Dalpino said she has reviewed scripts of Radio Free Asia's broadcasts and views the station's reporting as unbalanced. "They lean very heavily on reports by and about dissidents in exile. It doesn't sound like reporting about what's going in a country. Often, it reads like a textbook on democracy, which is fine, but even to an American it's rather propagandistic."
Christian conservatives are swallowing the Chinese forced abortion story in the same way they swallowed the Chinese fetus eating story - whole. The Family Research Council, World Magazine, The Christian Post, and a host of others have reprinted the story.
In 1995 Chris Smith and his anti-abortion minions were going after the gals getting together in China, for the Fourth World Conference on Women. Today they're going after UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. According to its site, UNFPA is
an international development agency that promotes the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity. UNFPA supports countries in using population data for policies and programmes to reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.
The Bush administration withheld funds from UNPFA and in 2003 diverted $34 million from China due to claims of forced abortions. Greg Barnes, of Australia's Mercury wrote,
Bush justified his cruel decision on the fact that China would use the funds for coercive abortion and forced sterilization, despite his own fact-finding mission turning up no evidence that the UN had ever participated in such programs.
The Bush administration had withheld funds from any organization that counseled abortion as an alternative to women. The Washington Post recently reported that,
The new president is also expected to lift a so-called global gag rule barring international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion, even in countries where the procedure is legal, said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, he rescinded the Reagan-era regulation, known as the Mexico City policy, but Bush reimposed it.
Newspapers from cities as far away as Melbourne, Australia are anxiously awaiting word on a Uyghur woman in China, six months pregnant with her third child. According to local reports, government officials tracked Arzigul Tursun down in her village and escorted her to a hospital where authorities ordered her to abort the baby against her will. Although guards had been stationed at the hospital, Arzigul managed to escape. After the police interrogated her family, the mother-to-be was recaptured yesterday in the home of some relatives. Her plight has sparked outrage in the international community, which is demanding her release.
In the past, the U.S. government -- at President Bush's insistence -- has withheld funding from groups like the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) for its supporting role in these coercive abortion policies. President-elect Obama has said he will restore U.S. funding to UNFPA. America will no longer be an innocent bystander of tragedies like this one. Instead, the U.S. will be knowingly funding forced abortions like Arzigul's with millions of taxpayer dollars. In an interview with the Obama campaign before the election, RH Reality check asked, "If elected President, would Sen. Obama, overturn the Global Gag Rule or reinstate funding for UNFPA?" A spokesman for the campaign responded, "Yes, Senator Obama would overturn the global gag rule and reinstate funding for UNFPA."
The new administration plans to funnel millions of dollars to UNFPA despite its support of China's savage one-child policy. Contact your leaders and tell them that terrorizing pregnant women is not the "change" America voted for. Urge them to oppose Obama's anti-woman agenda.
What better way to engender sympathy for an issue than to give it a human face - especially one that cannot be verified. Make it a face from a Kazakhstani border town, add an arrest and a dramatic escape, a government hunt and two courageous, old, white congressmen saving the day. Parts of the story might be true, but chances are we'll never hear of Arzigul Tursun again, unless she releases another single on YouTube.
Professor Deana Pollard Sacks snapped this picture with her cellphone at at the corner of Fries Road and Inverness Park Way in Houston, TX.
The McCain/Palin sign features a fetus waving an American flag overtop of the word LIFE. It doesn't look like official McMerch, but it's no joke.
A little feto-American floats like an astronaut in a sanitary, high-tech, self-contained womb. The "mother" who bears this child has been airbrushed out of the photo. The fetus waves an American flag, having already been drafted into James Dobson's army of the unborn.
McCain wants you to be able to choose your own doctor, because we have too much government.
MCCAIN: I want to leave money in your pocket. I want you to be able to choose the health care for you and your family. That's what I'm all about. And we've got too much government and too much spending and the government is -- the size of government has grown by 40 percent in the last eight years.
But if you're a woman, too much government wants to step in between you and the doctor you choose to be sure your concern for your health is not extreme.
MCCAIN: Just again, the example of the eloquence of Senator Obama. He's health for the mother. You know, that's been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything.
That's the extreme pro-abortion position, quote, "health."
McCain punctuated his comments by making air quotes when he said "health of the mother."
Now I knew Bill Donohue of the Catholic League was crazy, but I didn't realize until now that he is batshit crazy. His comments this week on the airing of the Palin/Muthee video.
Witchcraft is a sad reality in many parts of Africa, resulting in scores of deaths in Kenya over the past two decades.
The deaths were of the "witches" themselves, not of anyone they cursed, a point obviously lost on Donohue.
Bishop Muthee's blessing, then, was simply a reflection of his cultural understanding of evil. While others are not obliged to accept his interpretation, all can be expected to respect it.
Oh, yeah? Fuck that!
I don't respect an ignorant belief that leads to violence against innocent men and women any more than I respect the ignoramuses that hold those beliefs. Donohue continues,
More than that - Muthee should be hailed for asking God to shield Palin from harmful forces, however they may be manifested. And for this he is mocked and Palin ridiculed?
If you're not doing anything tonight, drop on over to the Family Research Council at 801 G Street, NW, in Washington, D.C., for an anti-abortion lecture, a book signing, and a feedbag.
For more on the tragic impact of abortion, we encourage you to join us Thursday at FRC headquarters for a life-changing lecture on the book Changed: Making Sense of Your Own or a Loved One's Abortion Experience with author Michaelene Fredenburg. A reception with heavy hors d'oeuvres and a book signing will follow.
Heavy hors d'oervres? I'd never heard of heavy hors d'oervres before.
What in the hell is a heavy hors d'oervre? A pineapple? One wafer-thin mint?
The religious right must be losing support if they have to lard their invitations with free food.
The Knights of Columbus and the Archdiocese of Chicago's Office for Evangelization are sponsoring the Reclaiming Fatherhood conference in Brook, IL on September 8-9. Taglined A Multifaceted Examination of Men Dealing With Abortion the conference promises to address the thoughts and feelings of men as the silent victims of abortion.
You know how men sometimes say, "We're pregnant"? Well, now, according to Christian counselor Mark B. Morrow they're saying, "I've had an abortion." Only they haven't, really. They just didn't prevent a woman from having one. Perhaps the workshop "Forgiveness Therapy With Post-Abortion Men" will help heal the wounds these horrid women have inflicted on them.
...Koop refused to publish a study of the physical and psychological effects on women of abortion because the study found no evidence that the procedure harms women.
Science has not helped the prolifers make their case that abortion harms women. At the Archives of General Psychiatry a study concludes,
Most women do not experience psychological problems or regret their abortion 2 years postabortion, but some do. Those who do tend to be women with a prior history of depression.
Since women have so abysmally failed as poster children of abortion regret, men will have to step in and fill their shoes. According the LA Times,
The Justice Foundation (formerly the Texas Justice Foundation) recently began soliciting affidavits from men; one online link promises, "Your story will help legal efforts to end abortion." Silent No More encourages men to testify at rallies.
Vincent M. Rue, a therapist and the co-director of the Institute for Pregnancy Loss, urges men to monitor themselves for signs of post-abortion trauma. They are told to look for the three "i's" - irritability, insomnia and impotence.
If all this were about men and their feelings, that would be one thing, but the motivation is political - the result this men's movement seeks is an end to abortion. What they're hoping is that the tears of white men will be the seeds of change
I cut off all my hair yesterday. I was beginning to have that FLDS look. This photo is after they braided the long stuff and chopped it off. The braid's going to Locks of Love - to make wigs for kids with cancer.
Shortly after this photo was taken the rest of my hair was cut - almost like a boy cut. It's great - cool, light, neat, easy and fast. I'll no longer feel like I'm tangled in a kelp forest at the beach.
Catholics are up in arms over a University of Minnesota professor, P.Z. Myers, who has threatened vague desecrations of a communion host. The exchange has become quite heated with Catholic making death threats.
At first I agreed with the Catholics - Myers didn't have to go out of his way to purposely defile the Catholic ritual of communion. It's one thing to write about how ridiculous it is - another to actually ritually defile a cracker.
P.Z. Myers only threatened various abuses, but did not go into specifics. And, really, I'd bet he was kidding - that he has more important things to do than affix googly eyes to a host and put on a puppet show. The Catholic Church has a history of blowing things like this out of proportion, AND with meeting them with violence. They should be very careful about getting their members riled up.
Shortly after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 rumors of host desecration began circulating, especially that of Jews stealing consecrated hosts and crucifying them in a practice that came to be known as "host nailing."
In THE PURSUIT OF THE MILLENNIUM, by Norman Cohn writes,
For if from the point of view of a Jew an atrocity committed on the host would be meaningless, from the point of view of a medieval Christian it would be a repetition of the torturing and killing of Christ. ...this interpretation is born out by the many stories of how, in the middle of the tortured wafer, Christ appeared as a child, dripping blood and screaming.
Between the years of 1243 and 1761 thousands of Jews were tortured and executed for the crime of host desecration. Most were burned, many were mutilated. In 1370 almost every Belgian Jew was massacred, man, woman and child, for the crime of host nailing.
In truth, I wouldn't have to go as far as P.Z. Myers promised - profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse. All I, as a woman, would have to do to defile a consecrated host is pray over the cracker, or try to serve the cracker to someone else. From the Catholic Encyclopedia:
Against these errors the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) confirmed the ancient Catholic teaching, that "no one but the priest [sacerdos], regularly ordained according to the keys of the Church, has the power of consecrating this sacrament".
And in case you had any questions after the reformation:
The Council of Trent opposed this teaching of Luther, and not only confirmed anew the existence of a "special priesthood" (Sess. XXIII, can. i), but authoritatively declared that "Christ ordained the Apostles true priests and commanded them as well as other priests to offer His Body and Blood in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass" (Sess. XXII, can. ii).
This is a religion for whom more than half the human race is a walking, talking abomination. Women, just by virtue of being alive, are unclean and inferior, need to be ritually separated from the community and cleansed, can't consecrate communion because they are so vile, and can't minister the gospel as a man does. The Catholic church treats women as cow like creatures too stupid to manage their own health issues. Don't think for a minute that this kind of foul doctrine doesn't bleed over into our culture 24/7.
So as far as I'm concerned, PZ Myers, you defile those crackers all you want - at least until the Catholic church stops holding women hostage to a crumbling old book written by a bunch of superstitious perverts.
Why, oh why, can't we all just be men? Come on, gals! Why the hold out? And you gay people - take one for the church. If we don't become men, or act like men, we're just going to have to swallow it from the men. If we don't, the men are going to take their football and go back to Rome.
Karen Bauer, affectionly known as the "lady in the coon skin cap", must be overjoyed at Bush's new conscience clause, which would allow her, as a pharmacist for life, to look down her nose and decide which doctor's prescriptions she will honor, and which she won't, based on her personal religious beliefs.
The Knights of Columbus and the Archdiocese of Chicago's Office for Evangelization are sponsoring the Reclaiming Fatherhood conference in Brook, IL on September 8-9. Taglined A Multifaceted Examination of Men Dealing With Abortion the conference promises to address the thoughts and feelings of men as the silent victims of abortion.
