‘We agree with God’ on controversial HB2.

PHOTO/LATISHA CATCHATOORIAN.

PHOTO/LATISHA CATCHATOORIAN.

RALEIGH – U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, with the support of President Obama, recently referred to transgender struggles as an issue of “civil rights.” Faith leaders who stood in front of the Capitol building Tuesday called Lynch’s remarks “offensive.”

“We’re here to debunk and dispel the many fallacious ideologies that people have attached to HB2, which is simply common sense legislation,” said John Amanchukwu, youth pastor at Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh. “Our president and our Attorney General Loretta Lynch have made some inflammatory comments and statements that are erroneous at best. A person’s ability to self-identify as something they are not has nothing to do with civil rights.”

“The language of ‘civil rights’ shouldn’t be hijacked to give privileges to the politically vocal while taking away freedoms from people disfavored by government,” said Bishop Patrick Wooden, senior pastor and bishop of Upper Room Church. “As you can see, I am African-American. I have been African-American since birth; God made me this way. For the attorney general to equate the legitimate struggle of the civil rights movement to the things that HB2 stands for is embarrassing and is wrong.”

Clarence Henderson, chairman of the Governor’s Commission on Civil Rights, participated in the Greensboro Woolworth sit-ins during the civil rights movement. He said transgender identity is a “feeling” and that to call it a “movement” offends him.

“I stand before you to tell you what civil rights is and what it isn’t. It certainly isn’t transgender (identification)… If you were born a man, that’s who you are. If you were born a female, that’s who you are. Tell me how you’re going to tell the families that came on those slave ships, in chains… tell their families (that it is comparable) to transgender (identity),” he said. “You tell me how many transgender people have been lynched.”

Oh, so now people have to be lynched to qualify for human rights? How about transgender people being disproportionately murdered every day? How about them being beaten and harassed at a continuous high level? How about continuous discrimination? I guess only lynchings will do.

Pastor Kenneth Fontenot, senior pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Wilson, said no law intended to protect a minority should be passed at the expense of the majority. “The laws passed in the 1960s did not bless black people while they hurt white people,” he said.

Really? There were a whole lot of white people at the time who would have most seriously disagreed with you.

Fontenot highlighted his point by pouring maple syrup on a stack of bread, saying that covering bread in syrup does not make it pancakes.

If you don’t have the money or means to make pancakes, syrup on bread will do nicely. Maybe you prefer bread with syrup, so what? Pancakes are made with same fucking ingredients as bread. You could say it’s just a matter of expression.

“It has become more and more challenging each day to witness our common sense liberties and freedoms being challenged and assaulted by an overreach of more and more government. I strongly believe that restrooms and showers separated by biological sex is common sense, not discrimination,” said Leon Threatt, senior pastor at Christian Faith Assembly in Charlotte.

Gabriel Rogers, senior pastor at Kingdom Christian Church in Charlotte, said that just like God loves everyone, so do the ministers, but if the government gives liberties to transgender people, it’s difficult to police the ill-willed with predatory intentions protected by the same law.

Oh yes, because we’re doing such a great job of policing the ill-willed with predatory intentions now, aren’t we? You can’t even manage to police all the ill-willed predatory actions by those who consider themselves upright people of god.

“What are we going to do with the trauma when our young girls and our young boys are exposed to (opposite sex) genitalia? What are we going to do when someone is confused about their own sexuality because they’ve been exposed to someone who was confused in and of themselves?” he said.

Oh my, the horrible trauma! FFS, aren’t there actual traumas you could wring your hands over?

Jimmy Bention, pastor of Metrolina Christian Center Church of God in Christ in Monroe, was incredulous when he said society is “soft-shoeing” the issue because the conversation is about  “penises and vaginas.”

No, it isn’t. And why are you talking about genitals at all when they are capable of causing irreparable trauma?

Added Wooden: “The African-American community is not monolithic. We’re not rogue pastors. We’re not ashamed to admit we agree with God.”

Golly, I must have missed the world-wide announcement from “god”. Can we get a replay, please?

Source.

Your Very Own Thundercloud…

Oh man, I want a houseful of these.

Cloud, by Richard Clarkson.

The Cloud is an Arduino-controlled, motion-triggered lightning & thunder performance, as well as a music-activated visualizing speaker. As an interactive lamp and speaker system designed to mimic a thundercloud in appearance, The Cloud employs embedded motion sensors to create unique lightning and thunder shows while providing entertainment value and inspiring awe. This is a kind of magic, not based on illusions and trickery, but on sensors and code. Featuring a powerful speaker system, The Cloud allows its beholder to stream music via any Bluetooth compatible device and can adapt to any desired lighting, color and brightness.

Acting as both an immersive lightning experience and visual feedback integrated speaker, The Cloud introduces innovative physical computing and interaction design hardware by bringing this technology into the home. The Cloud celebrates collaborative code, free-sharing and accessing prototyping information. The code is available to the public to use and improve, to provide blueprints for the next generation of smart objects.

[…]

The Cloud is made by felting hypoallergenic fiberfill to a sponge casing which holds the speakers and componentry within. Users control the functions of The Cloud  through a small, wireless remote.

There’s much more at the site. Via The Creators Project.

Dawkins: I’ve Given Up Twitter.

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Richard Dawkins. Getty Images.

Some of the professor’s most heated recent spats have unfolded on social media. He has qualified some of his Twitter remarks and lamented that medium’s lack of nuance, but embraces it nonetheless.

Or at least, he used to.

“I’ve given up Twitter,” Prof Dawkins says quietly but curtly. The tweets that appear in his name, apparently, are the work of the staff at his Foundation for Reason and Science.

“I occasionally ask them to post something, which they do, but I’ve given up doing it myself.”

It’s about time. Source.

Gambling on Anti-Transgender Policy.

Grayson County Superintendent Kelly Wilmore.

Grayson County Superintendent Kelly Wilmore.

The schools in Grayson County, Virginia have a new policy governing their bathrooms and locker rooms, and it’s the exact opposite of what the Obama administration recently recommended in its guidance on accommodating transgender students. School officials credited the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) for both drafting the policy and encouraging them to implement it, but they might someday regret trusting the conservative legal organization.

The “Student Physical Privacy Policy” ADF drafted for Grayson County’s schools is pretty straight-forward. All school bathrooms, locker rooms, and shower rooms must be separated by sex, and “sex” is determined by “anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth.” It further states that “an individual’s original birth certificate” — emphasis on “original” — can be used as “definitive evidence” of a person’s sex.

If a school wants to accommodate trans students, principals must segregate those students to single-stall restrooms or “controlled use of an employee restroom, locker room, or shower.” They definitely are not allowed to use facilities that match their gender identity.

Superintendent Kelly Wilmore told the conservative outlet LifeSiteNews that his concerns have been “safety and privacy,” not politics. “It’s not that hard to claim that you’re now a transgender student,” he surmised. “All you gotta do is have a note from your parents, go and talk to the principal, and suddenly you’re transgender.”

And Wilmore has a number of reasons he isn’t worried about legal backlash. First, he believes that by segregating and ostracizing trans students, it’s actually protecting them from harassment. Second, he doesn’t think there are any transgender students in the district, so there’s no one to object. But most importantly, he’s convinced that ADF will have his back.

“The policy we adopted was written by the Alliance Defending Freedom organization,” he openly admitted, and they “claim that if we adopt their policy and it is contested,” they will come to the school district’s defense for free.

Oh, the twisted reasoning of banal evil. Segregation and ostracization is now protection. That’s terribly convenient, if you’re a bigot. This really is Civil Rights Movement II. It’s the same language, the same fucked up reasoning, the same dehumanization.

Full Story Here.

Christians, We Are At War.

(MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP/Getty Images)

(MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP/Getty Images)

Seriously suffering a melodrama overdose here. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the rhetoric keeps screeching higher and higher. Now we have Christians, we are at war. Maybe it’s time we accept that fact. It’s a very long screed, replete with bible passages, exhortations, charts, and graphs, all delivered at a fevered pitch over Christianity quavering at the cliff edge of extinction. No more of this Mr. Nice Jesus, no sir. It’s time for I’ll fry your ass and toss you burning into hell Jesus. Yep.

It’s not fun to think about, I realize, but war is not supposed to be fun. Especially not this kind of war. A war where the casualties are lost in the fires of Hell. A war where the enemy plots to rip your soul out of your chest and drag it into the darkness forever. A war that cannot be escaped. A war that conscripts every human on the planet into combat, on one side or the other, whether they like it or not. A war that we must train our children to fight. A war that could claim their souls, too, if we do not train them well. A war that will not be over until the end of the world. A war that God will ultimately win, but many human beings – maybe even including you, personally, and me – will lose if we die fighting for the wrong side.

These are not enjoyable thoughts. They are downright terrifying, in fact. But we cannot make the reality of our situation disappear any more than we could have wished away WWII by closing our eyes and hiding under our bed while the Germans dropped explosives on London. We can think all the nice thoughts and sing all the happy songs we want, but optimism never saves anyone when the bombs start falling. And it won’t save us from Hell. Indeed, it’s much more likely to send us there.

[…]

Christ came to separate us from our sin – a violent, painful process that requires a sword, and leads straight to the cross. And He doesn’t stop there. He enlists all of us to join Him in His ancient war against evil. A war that, even if it does not get us physically killed (although, depending on where you live, it may), it’s a war that will cause deep divisions and strife in our communities and even our families. There is nothing particularly peaceful about that.

The peace comes later, and only to his good and faithful soldiers. Those who will not take up their cross – that is, embrace the suffering and sacrifice required to gain holiness – will be deemed unworthy of Him in the end. Whoever finds his life and his peace and his happiness in worldly pursuits and worldly pleasures will lose it eternally. But whoever is willing to lay down his life – not a peaceful process, by any means – will be given life in Heaven.

Christ is not calling us to an earthly existence of endless fun and decadent luxury. He is calling us to die. And in the meantime, He is cordially inviting us to be despised by the whole world. “You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 10:22).

[…]

Therefore, despite my valued reader’s claims, I am not trying to “bring us back to the days of Christian holy wars.” We never left those days. I cannot “bring us back” to conditions that have already existed since the dawn of time. All I can do, all anyone can do, is acknowledge that the war is on, and then choose a side. But no matter what we choose, the holy war is happening. God and the Devil and angels and demons are fighting, right now, as we speak, and the battlefield is the heart of man, to paraphrase Dostoevsky.

And so to the first statement – that “militant Christianity” is “driving people away from the church” – I say, good. The church is by its nature a militant organization of faithful soldiers waging a never-ending assault against the powers of darkness. The more it takes on that tone and that appearance, the better. And the more we weed out the bored, insincere and feckless, the better. If a person is “driven away” because the truth scares them, let them leave. Better they join the enemy outright than stay as infiltrators in our ranks, attempting to entice more believers into their cowardly, wicked way of thinking.

[…]

There is no room anymore to try and appease and cajole and compromise with the world. The Devil has cut great, wide roads through our culture, and for decades he has encountered almost no resistance. The signs of his enormous success are all around us. I don’t need to provide examples, but here are a few anyway:

  • There’s an abortion clinic in nearly every city, murdering children and selling their parts.
  • The vast majority of women who get abortions are Christian.
  • Gay marriage is now enshrined as a “human right.”
  • A majority of American Christians reject the Bible’s teachings on sexuality and abortion.
  • A majority of American Christians can’t be bothered to go to church once a month, let alone once a week.
  • Atheism is surging.
  • Cohabitation is becoming more popular than marriage.
  • Porn is one of the most profitable industries in America, especially in the Bible Belt.
  • All of our most powerful institutions – government, media, Hollywood, academia – are propagators of far-left ideology.
  • What should be our most powerful institution, the family, is crumbling. At least 43 percent of kids in the United States live without fathers in the home.
  • Half of my generation believes women can have penises and men can have vaginas.
  • This election season.

And so on.

And so on indeed. The dramatic glurge continues here, from a self-titled professional truth sayer. Seems to me that someone in such dire need of being seen as persecuted, there are plenty of places in this world they could go where that would actually happen. It’s interesting how they never manage to do that, but they do find plenty of time to wax dramatic over how all people having basic human rights is going to affect them so terribly, oh yes, when the truth of the matter is that it won’t affect them in the least.

He choked like a dog. . . . Once a choker, always a choker.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally Wednesday in Anaheim, Calif. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images).

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally Wednesday in Anaheim, Calif. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images).

Trump continues his ‘strategy’ of mouthing off, about everyone. How anyone can take this clown seriously is beyond me. I just don’t get it.

A fresh string of attacks by Donald Trump this week on rivals in the Republican establishment — including one delivered against a prominent Latino governor in her home state — raised new doubts about his ability or desire to unite the party’s badly fractured leadership.

[…]

The intraparty skirmishing began with an attack on New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) during a campaign rally in Albuquerque, where Trump blamed her for mismanaging the state’s economy and suggested that she was shirking her responsibilities to her constituents.

[…]

Next, during a campaign event Wednesday in Anaheim, Calif., Trump rattled off a string of attacks that played like a greatest-hits collection from the raucous GOP primary. He knocked South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s decision to endorse Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), mocked former Florida governor Jeb Bush for his energy level and blasted 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney as a “choker.” None of the three have endorsed him.

“Poor Mitt Romney. Poor Mitt. . . . I mean, I have a store that’s worth more money than he is,” Trump said, adding later: “He choked like a dog. . . . Once a choker, always a choker.” He also called Romney “stupid” and joked that he “walked like a penguin” on stage.

There’s much more story, and video here.

Beautiful Salt: Univers’sel

motoi yamamoto's Floating Garden.

Motoi Yamamoto’s Floating Garden. Photos courtesy of the artist.

Inside the medieval castle tower at aigues-mortes, a 13th century walled city in southern france, japanese artist motoi yamamoto has completed two monumental installations made of salt. ‘Floating garden’ and ‘labyrinth’ form part of the exhibition ‘univers’ sel‘ on from now until november 30, 2016, which celebrates creative interpretations of the natural element.

‘Floating garden’ comprises a circular form filled with a lacework of carefully-placed grains of salt. The installation is housed within the castle tower at Aigues-Mortes. In its realization, the artist sits down in a small space where no particles are laid, simultaneously moving a container of salt in a particular rhythm, a subtle movement which creates tiny cells that mimic bubble-like patterns. Each of these thin salt ribbons symbolizes pieces of memories and fragments of time. The swirling, hurricane-like pattern is used as a motif used throughout East Asia to represent life and death, resurrection, rebirth and vitality. The ephemeral artwork was realized in 45 hours over the course of five days.

motoi-yamamoto-floating-garden-and-labyrinth-salt-aigues-mortes-designboom-07

The installation ‘labyrinth’ is housed within the castle’s ramparts.

The installation ‘labyrinth’ is housed within the castle’s ramparts.

Via Designboom, where there are many more photos.

Eleven States Sue in the Name of Bigotry.

11

AUSTIN, Tex. — The Obama administration on Wednesday faced its first major challenge to its directive this month about the civil rights of transgender students in public schools, as officials in 11 states filed a lawsuit that tested the federal government’s interpretation of the statute forbidding sexual discrimination.

The states, including Alabama, Georgia, Texas and Wisconsin, brought the case in a Federal District Court in North Texas and said that the Obama administration had “conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process and running roughshod over common sense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”

[…]

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, repeating a pledge from the days of Texas independence, called the issue a “come-and-take-it moment.” He said that the state was prepared to vigorously defy the directive and that it would not be cowed by the administration’s pledge to withhold federal funding for non-compliance.

“He says he’s going to withhold funding if schools do not follow the policy,” Mr. Patrick told reporters. “Well, in Texas, he can keep his 30 pieces of silver. We will not yield to blackmail from the President of the United States.”

Full Story Here. UPDATE: The ACLU has weighed in on this bit of mass hysteria.

However, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that is impossible because they will lack standing in court.

“The Supreme Court has made clear that one cannot sue an agency just because they disagree with the agency’s guidance,” the ACLU said in a press release Wednesday. “If these attorneys general disagree with the agency’s interpretation of what the federal ban on sex discrimination means, they can make that argument to the court when it arises in a real case.”

Instead, the ACLU said that this is nothing more than a “political stunt” from conservative states.

James Esseks, director of the ACLU’s LGBT Project said the Texas-based lawsuit is “an attack… on transgender Americans, plain and simple.” He also believes “the real targets here are vulnerable young people and adults who simply seek to live their lives free from discrimination when they go to school, work or the restroom.”

Full Story Here.