Month: April 2012

MP Stephen Woodworth won’t answer a simple question about rape and abortion

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , 36 Comments

The question in question is, “if a woman is raped, do you support her right to an abortion?”

Woodworth’s the guy that’s trying to reopen the abortion debate as a private member proposal despite Harper’s campaign promise that the present abortion laws would not be revisited yet again. So, with tacit approval from his party — who, while they aren’t backing him explicitly, certainly are more than willing to allow the debate to happen, and with their steamroller house numbers would almost certainly win if they voted in lockstep with their party — here we go again. Expect no engagement on the topic in parliament, since that’s well out of fashion these days. But expect at the same time some heavy trolling on the internet to make it seem like there’s popular support. Not that the populace brought this forward, or are encouraging it.

Oh sure, he’ll engage personally with people like Steve Thoms (SomeCndnSkeptic) on Twitter for weeks on end, getting science wrong, getting the law wrong, getting simple words wrong, and smearing opponents as being like Bashar al-Assad, dictator of Syria.

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MP Stephen Woodworth won’t answer a simple question about rape and abortion
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An evil Easter treat for us atheists

Jason Thibeault, , , , , 6 Comments

Not only am I only celebrating the secular part of the holiday, I’m doing it in such a manner that onlookers might think I was the single most evil person in the universe for doing it. See, for lunch, I’m eating deviled live baby chickens, whole.

Deviled eggs made to look like chicks

The beak’s a little crunchy, putting it at odds from the rest of the chick’s squishiness, but what can you expect?

Idea shamelessly stolen from this image.

An evil Easter treat for us atheists

Canada’s low fertility rate dooms us, thanks to the homogay agenda

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , 23 Comments

Via Right Wing Watch, the religious and anti-gay Family Research Institute’s March memo makes some rather astounding claims.

Astoundingly stupid.

Apparently, because of the gay rights movement, women are having less kids. Somehow, gays being able to marry one another discourages women from reproducing. Somehow. All because children aren’t being taught to hate gays like the religious nutters really, really want.

Like frogs in a kettle being slowly boiled to death, FRI frequently hears people — including those concerned about our cultural decline — suggest that the progress of gay rights is not worth a great deal of worry. After all, ‘the sky is not falling. The sun will always come up tomorrow.’ But no matter how ‘big’ or ‘small’ the crisis seems at the moment, the goal of proper social policy is to assure a future for society. As the birth rates of Western countries continue to fall, those who have supported gay rights seem oblivious to the contribution such ‘rights’ make to the decline. Even those who have ‘tolerated’ (or not vigorously opposed) gay rights do not seem to understand the implications. But now the sky is starting to fall. From Xtra, a gay magazine in Vancouver, comes this:

“the gay rights movement is shifting norms in Canada. And with that comes a message to those who won’t evolve: your outdated morals are no longer acceptable, and we will teach your kids the new norm.” (10/20/11)

Canada produces 1.6 children/woman. Its future is thus doomed. Onward gay rights!

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Canada’s low fertility rate dooms us, thanks to the homogay agenda

Gay Students of Brigham Young University: It Gets Better

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , , 7 Comments

This broke my heart.

It broke my heart at least partly because these students are all Mormon, and are less capable of questioning their religion than they are capable of questioning their peers or the gender roles proscribed to them, and partly because they faced such disapprobation at the hands of others that shared their faith.
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Gay Students of Brigham Young University: It Gets Better

Quebec gun registry spared (very) temporarily

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , 7 Comments

Yesterday, a Quebec Superior Court judge granted a five-day injunction against the Harper government’s attempted early destruction of the long gun registry. You’ll remember that I reported back in December that they were totally going to go ahead and destroy it once the law passed even if the court case was ongoing. Well, the court case has at least another four days now, and the government is disallowed to jump the gun, so to speak.

Via the CBC:

The Quebec government sought the injunction in court in Montreal Thursday, in anticipation of royal assent for C-19, the Harper government’s legislation to fulfil a longtime campaign promise to scrap the registry.

The injunction granted Thursday applies to the data collected on residents of the province of Quebec, but also covers the accessibility, availability and integrity of the system holding the registry, as well as the equipment and tools that allow access to the Quebec data. That means the federal government can’t take further steps on ending the registry while the injunction is in place. And Quebec can keep adding data to the registry.

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Quebec gun registry spared (very) temporarily

Trolling to be illegal worldwide (Updated: bill dead!)

Jason Thibeault, , , , , , , , , 11 Comments

Update: The below is mostly nullified as the bill was sent back to the House with amendments, but died anyway. Thank goodness. Of course, all the other non-trolling-related nonsense mentioned below still stands!

Well, if you happen to troll someone in Arizona, anyway.

Arizona House Bill 2549 passed both legislative houses last Thursday and is now awaiting approval from Arizona’s governor Brewer. The statute states that,

“It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use a ANY ELECTRONIC OR DIGITAL DEVICE and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person.”

If the electronic devices and means are employed to stalk a victim, the penalty bumps up to a class 3 felony.”

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Trolling to be illegal worldwide (Updated: bill dead!)

General Zoi: “So I tried to go to a brony meetup today”

Jason Thibeault, , , , 19 Comments

Consciousness-raising is usually a pretty difficult thing, especially if you’re trying to become a presence in a community to which you’re only peripherally involved, and the event that inclines you toward trying to do so also gets you irritated or annoyed or angry. Given the circumstances, I think General Zoi probably did about as well as I might have managed myself.

Since it was just the three of us, we were kind of just sitting around having rather stilted conversation, waiting for other people to show up. The organizer started talking about other people who had RSVPed. I do not recall what exactly prompted him to say this, and I really wish I could, but he suddenly said, “One of the people coming is a trap. They used to be a guy.”

I looked at him. “Trap?”

“It’s from General Akbar. ‘It’s a trap!’”

“I don’t really care where it’s from. Why did you call her a trap?”

“That’s what the Internet calls them.”

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General Zoi: “So I tried to go to a brony meetup today”