This person really said this

[TW: Anti–Semitism, misogyny, homophobia]

While looking for something else entirely, I came across this disturbing blog. It’s called Santorum 2012 and self–describes in its Twitter feed as “A blog in support of, but not affiliated with, Santorum for President.” Considering that this blog’s Twitter feed says “All RTs [that is, retweets] are endorsements” (my interpolated note) and that some things originally tweeted by a member of Westboro Baptist Church (Fred Phelps and his ilk; the people who protest at soldiers’ funerals) are retweeted (that is, endorsed), I think I’ve found out all I need to know about this person. The fact that WBC are serious in their homophobia makes me pretty certain that this blog is not a Poe.

I’d like to draw me readers’ attention to one particular post. It’s titled “Plan B is nothing but ‘Plan A’ for the Immoral“. The topic of that post is criticizing the support that the women on The View have for birth control. The complete text is as follows (my emphasis and parenthetical notes):

In the town where this blogger was raised, five or more women under the same roof is considered a brothel (according to Snopes, this is false).  So, it’s not surprising that the ladies on “The View” are supportive of birth control methods, including abortion and Plan B.  Not only are these women typical immoral ‘feminists’, they are also, in some cases, Lesbians and/or Jewesses…. (Last sentence asking people to watch a video in that post omitted).

Rather that attempting to come up some legitimate argument to make, this person attacks the women of The View because they are female, feminist, lesbian, or Jewish.

Misogyny, lesbophobia, and anti–Semitism, all in one post.

After the jump are screenshots I’ve saved in case this person tries to delete their post.

Jeannieology of a not–Poe

I’ve seen any number of ridiculous objections to the birth control mandate in the US, but this one has got to be one of the loopiest. I found it at Sadly No!, and I swear that it is not a Poe. It’s by someone named Jeannie DeAngelis, and is titled “Is Obama purposely altering America’s religious complexion?”. Considering that Ms. DeAngelis’ writing has also been found at websites like The American Stinker pretty much sums up all you need to know about her. And since I haven’t done a fisking in so long, DeAngelis’ screed provides the perfect target.

Just like a benevolent government that has worked hard to help provide naïve young girls with parent-free abortions,[...]

All women and girls have reproductive rights. Parents don’t own their kids, and they shouldn’t suffer because they happened to be born to fetus fetishist parents. Abortion (and contraception, although DeAngelis didn’t mention it in this context) are legal.

[I]t stands to reason that ‘patriarchal’ Christianity would be next in line to be undermined.[...]

If patriarchal religion is being undermined I’m all for it.

When it comes to challenging authority, the President seems to be particularly obsessed with using birth control and abortion as a weapon.

“Birth control and abortion as a weapon?” You have until the count of ten before I pump your guts full of pills!;)

[...]Barry seems excessively concerned about ensuring that everyone, regardless of age, credo or upbringing, can obtain free condoms, morning-after pills, sterilization, and abortion-on-demand.

Actually, economic and other barriers ensure that most women don’t have abortion or contraception on demand. Additionally, the Hyde Amendment and other laws ensure that federal tax dollars and none of your money™ are not being used to fund (most) abortions (cite).

The only religious group Obama respects and is careful not offend, whether religiously or parentally, is Muslims.

Bush emphasized on a number of occasions that he was fighting Islamic terrorists and extremists and not the vast majority of Muslims who are neither.

The Muslim faith has drawn a line in the sand and the President, who feels very comfortable defying every other authority from the Vatican to the parents of 14-year-old girls[...]

The Pope runs his own country. And again, children shouldn’t suffer because they had the misfortune to be born to parents who abuse them by denying them legal health care.

[A]cquiesces, without question, to the tenets of the Koran.

This conspiracy theory that Obama is a secret Muslim has been debunked a million times.

Barack Obama knows full well that “Muslims believe that health insurance is ‘haraam,’ or forbidden, because they liken the ambiguity and probability of insurance to gambling.” Thus, without question the Obama administration has decided that, unlike other faiths, “This belief excludes them from any of the requirements, mandates, or penalties set forth in [Obamacare].” Obama respects the Muslim stance on gambling, and presto! Muslims are exempt from health insurance, and more specifically the birth control, sterilization, and abortion mandates that accompany it.

Actually, as Snopes and FactCheck make clear, while some Muslim groups object to life insurance, most Muslims have no problem with health insurance or other insurance required by law. Considering that no Muslim groups objects to Social Security, which Christian groups granted exemptions under the appropriate laws do, it is unlikely that any Muslim would be granted an exemption. As Snopes puts it, “[N]o Muslim group has ever qualified for an exemption under the guidelines which define which religious groups would be exempt from the health care law.”

And furthermore, there is no abortion mandate.

DeAngelis then goes on to quote some Catholic dogma about human reproduction and sexuality. The appropriate response to this is, of course, to point out that if one is concerned about abortions (like DeAngelis herself mentioned as recently as last month) and wants to reduce the number of abortions, improved access to contraception is the number one way to do it. That, along with better sex education, is how places like the Czech Republic (cite), Georgia (cite), and elsewhere (cite) have reduced their abortion rates.

Barack Obama, who’s obsessed with everyone else’s sex life[...]

“[O]bsessed with everyone else’s sex life?” I thought this article was written by Jeannie DeAngelis, and not Yagotta B. Kidding.

The question arises as to why a President so focused on controlling so many Americans’ reproductive habits and overriding religion[...]

98% of sexually active Catholic women use contraception. A Majority of Catholics support no–cost contraception (cite). The only religion being overridden is that of the professional virgins almost no one listens to anyway. In addition, as David Frum (a Republican) pointed out, those who oppose the birth control mandate on the grounds of “freedom of religion” are incoherent, much less the fact that several states have required churches to follow similar rules several years already.

[...]Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Barack Obama have joined forces, blocked the exits, and are distributing free condoms at the contraceptive circus.

Contraceptive circus? Really?

Meanwhile, Islam is exempt.

See just above. DeAngelis mentioned this in the part of the paragraph that I skipped over. She sure does know how to rant, doesn’t she?

The President is urging and actively assisting in lowering birth rates in a Christian community whose tenets reject contraception and abortion and stands by while, according to Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life population projections, “Globally, the Muslim population is forecast to grow at about twice the rate of the non-Muslim population over the next two decades.”[...]

Ooooh, alert alert, it’s the scary foreign people! That aside, if you read such demographic reports, you’ll find out that the fertility rate in the Muslim world is plummetting. The reason for the continued increase is, of course, population momentum: When you have a large cohort of people of prime reproductive age, the population will almost certainly go up even with a low birth rate.

DeAngelis continues ranting the same stuff for her last paragraph, reiterating her previous wingnut word salad about Muslim exemptions and pretty much nothing that hasn’t been debunked above.

Update: This post used to have a picture, but I removed it on the grounds that it added no value to this post.

No fat lady in a horned helmet over here

The Arbourist’s partner, The Intransigent One, is a choral soprano who has received some vocal training. She has even taught herself arias. The Arbourist himself sings in a choir but mostly plays the piano. With that information in mind, I wonder they think of this video, another incarnation of the “Sh*t people say” meme:

It’s Sh*t Opera Singers Say, and is brought to you by mezzo–soprano Jennifer Rivera and Tenor William Ferguson.

Some trivia: The song sung when she puts on all those scarves is not a made up, but rather is a few measures of what is arguably the best–known opera excerpt sung by women, the Queen of the Night Aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, also known as Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen. The fact that she doesn’t reach F₆ shows she’s no coloratura soprano.

Women’s hockey qualifying for Sochi

The IIHF has announced the men and women’s national ice hockey teams that intend to compete in qualifications for the 2014 Winter Olympics. The participating women’s teams, in order of their placing in the IIHF World Rankings, are:

1	USA	7	Kazakhstan	13	Latvia	19	Slovenia
2	Canada	8	Slovakia	14	Czech Republic	21	Denmark
3	Finland	9	China	15	Austria	25	Hungary
4	Sweden	10	Germany	16	France	28	[South] Korea
5	Russia	11	Japan	17	Italy	34	Poland
6	Switzerland	12	Norway	18	Great Britain	35	Spain

Russia automatically qualify as hosts. The top five other teams after this April’s Women’s World Championships automatically qualify for Sochi. The remaining teams must participate in qualification tournaments. The Olympic qualification tournaments are open to any IIHF member that wishes to participate. Hence the reason for last time’s debut of the Bulgarian team, notorious 82—0 losers. This is also one of the reasons for the participation of South Korea this time. (The other is fact that they are hosting in 2018).

As of now, the format of the upcoming World Championship ensures that the four teams in Group A— United States, Canada, Finland, and Russia— cannot finish worse than 6th place. This clinches direct qualification spots for the United States, Canada and Finland. The remaining teams, all in Group B— Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia, and Germany— are all mathematically able to directly qualify. However, only Sweden and Switzerland have realistic hopes. There are numerous scenarios that result in them qualifying directly, and I’ll discuss some of them in my World Championship preview posts come April.

If you can’t beat the shit out of your own child who can you beat the shit out of?

CBC reports on a new study to be published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that physical punishment of children (such as spanking) has severe negative health consequences, and that the exemption in the Criminal Code that allows it should be repealed. The issue of spanking was covered by the Supreme Court in 2004, which allowed the exemption to stand.

Children who have experienced physical punishment tend to be more aggressive toward parents, siblings, peers and, later, spouses, and are more likely to develop antisocial behaviour, said Joan Durrant, of the department of family social sciences at the University of Manitoba and Ron Ensom of Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa.

Physical punishment is also associated with a variety of mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety and use of drugs and alcohol.

[...]

They noted that when parents in more than 500 families were trained to reduce their use of physical punishment, the difficult behaviours in the children also declined.

[....]

Although working to outlaw spanking is the correct move, one shouldn’t focus so much on corporal punishment that one neglects to target other forms of child abuse. There are destructive things that parents can do to their kids that don’t involve any hitting. For example, Clarissa has mentioned force–feeding. Another example is arbitrarily denying healthcare.

The title of this post is taken from a comment by Jake Squid at an old Pandagon thread.

Prop 8 struck down

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has, in a 2–1 ruling, struck down California’s bigoted Proposition 8 (via). Hence, unless a stay is issued, same–sex couples will be able to marry in the 9th circuit’s jurisdiction California again. Personally, I expect a stay to be issued and the appeals process to continue, hence I don’t think same–sex couples will be allowed to marry.

In the decision is granted the proponents of Prop 8 standing to defend, and it rejected the claim that the trial judge, Vaughn Walker, should have disqualified himself because he is gay. The striking down was the correct decision. And in reaction to the ruling, I expect the wingnut and homophobe types to freak out.

From the decision:

“Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California.”

Update: The actual ruling is an extremely narrow, California–specific ruling, and I have therefore corrected that error. Also, the Daily Dish has a mini–roundup of reactions.

A brilliant rant

John Cole has written a brilliant post about the negative influence of fundamentalism and conservative Christianity on US society (via). An excerpt (links removed):

But from where I stand these days, the only thing I see religion doing in the public sector is gay bashing and telling women, mostly poor and desperate and in deplorable financial and personal situations, what to do with their bodies. I see busybodies deciding what drugs they can dispense to which customers, or deciding that they don’t have to issue a marriage license because of some petty deity that I don’t believe in told them to hate their fellow citizens and ignore the law. In a country in dire financial straits but still spending billions and billions of dollars on education, I see religious folks actively and openly working to make our schoolkids dumber. I see them shooting people who provided a medical procedure, and I see others rummaging through people’s personal lives to find out who hasn’t lived up the word of God. I see glassy-eyed fools running for President claiming that vaccines that save lives actually cause cancer, or that if you get raped and are pregnant, you should just lie back and think of Jeebus and make the best of a bad situation. In fact, everywhere you look these days, if Christianity or religion is getting a mention, it means something ugly is happening and someone somewhere is being victimized, marginalized, or otherwise abused. Go read some of the arguments against integration and you’ll see the same bible verses used today against homosexuals. Fifty years from now, they’ll be recycling them again to trash someone else they don’t like or who isn’t good enough for them.

Read the rest of it.