Why liberals are “obsessed” with human rights

I have to admit, I don’t have a lot of patience with conservative opinion sites like townhall.com, but this one is so over the top I had to laugh despite myself.

Why Liberals Are So Obsessed With Racism, Homosexuality and Transsexualism

Conservatives care about logic. Liberals care about emotion.

Yup, exactly. That’s why he, as a conservative, starts by assuming that conservative=logical and liberal=emotional, universally. Because that’s such a logical premise. And he’s just getting warmed up.

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ADF recruits artists in quest for anti-gay discrimination

AZCentral.com (“part of the USAToday network”), has published a propaganda piece entitled, “Phoenix artists sue rather than create art for same sex weddings.”

Brush & Nib is an upscale hand-painting, hand-lettering and calligraphy company that creates and sells customized art, including for weddings.

Brush & Nib reflects who Joanna and Breanna are and what they believe — only creating art consistent with their Christian beliefs.

And since the Bible very clearly states, “Thou Shalt Not produce hand-lettered invitations for gay couples announcing their impending wedding,” they should have a Constitutional right to discriminate against any potential clients who happen to be gay, amirite?

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Redundant “protection” bill fails in Louisiana

Oh noes! ChristianToday.com reports that Louisiana lawmakers failed to pass a law that ostensibly would have protected churches and pastors from the non-existent threat of being forced to perform gay marriages against their will. Now the only thing protecting conservative Christians in Louisiana are the First Amendment, a number of federal laws that already protect religious liberty, and a couple centuries or so of legal precedent.

Eek.

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What to ask the hate-preacher in your store

As a preliminary caveat, I think it’s only prudent to say that confrontations—especially with irrational people—have a non-trivial potential for escalating into violence, and we need to understand that and be careful to avoid it. Knowing when to shut up and let the store/security staff take over can be key.

That said, it might be fun to ask, as a mental exercise, what would be a good question to ask a hate-preacher if they happened to storm in to your local Target and begin harassing innocent shoppers?

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It’s the phones’ fault

Via Ed Brayton comes this report that “NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton is blaming the “epidemic” of cell phone videos of police officers committing misconduct and abuse for that misconduct.” Makes perfect sense to me, and it confirms a theory I have that I call “Schrödinger’s Cop.” See, there’s two waveforms present in any police interaction with citizens, and the act of observing this interaction, via a cell phone’s video camera, causes the waveform to collapse. It’s all quantum, right Commissioner Bratton?

Either that or else Bratton is just bullshitting to try and excuse police misconduct. Hmm.

Different, thus dangerous

According to a report on NPR, almost a dozen states have joined together to file a lawsuit seeking to protect bigotry and privilege against an onslaught of justice and equal rights for minorities.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, says the federal government has “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 commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”

Yes, a “massive social experiment.” Those evil government officials, with their bubbling test tubes and unstable nuclear reactors, rubbing their rubber-gloved hands together and gleefully cackling, “Let’s take a bunch of innocent, harmless people and see what happens if we mind our own business and leave them alone, MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!”

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What “apocalypse” looks like

I was listening to Christian talk radio on the way home again, and one of the two co-hosts had an interesting story to share. It seems he and his son stopped at one of the larger gas station/convenience store combos so his son could use the bathroom, and while he was waiting outside the single-occupant mens room for his son, a man came up and said, “You waiting to use the rest room?” The dad said yes he was, whereupon the newcomer said, “Well, I guess I’m feeling like a woman today,” and entered the women’s rest room and locked the door and used it.

And that was the end of the story. No women were involved, no sexual assaults occurred, no one was injured (unless you count the tarnished pride of the guy who was so desperate he had to use the ladies room). All that happened was that a person who might otherwise have suffered an embarrassing and messy biological malfunction got to use a perfectly serviceable facility that would otherwise have gone unused.

Of course, this being Christian talk radio, the discussion thereafter was all about “how far America has fallen” and “haven’t Christians been warning us this would happen” and “isn’t it shameful that the President would get involved” and so on and so on. But I couldn’t help but think, “This is the end of America they were so worried about? A guy making a joke while taking harmless steps to avoid peeing himself?”

And they wonder why more and more people are ceasing to take Christianity seriously.

Procrustean pants

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Dan Forest has released a statement about the Obama administration’s new bathroom policy. Forest states, in part,

North Carolina will not stand by and let our locker rooms and high school showers be used for social experimentation at the expense of the privacy and protection of our young boys and girls. I do not think it is appropriate for teenage boys and girls to share the same bathroom. I don’t think it appropriate for teenage boys and girls to shower next to each other.

Which sounds almost moral until you realize that this is his argument in favor of forcing high school girls to share bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers with transgender boys.

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A martyr for “clarity”

Poor, persecuted Roy Moore. As you may have heard, he’s been suspended (with pay!) pending the outcome of proceedings against him in the Alabama Court of the Judiciary. The suspension follows a complaint filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center after Moore’s refusal to comply with the Supreme Court decision upholding the right to gay marriage. But according to the Christian Post, this is all just a big misunderstanding. Moore wasn’t trying to obstruct justice. Not at all! He just was a little confused about a few things.

Travis S. Weber, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Washington, DC-based Family Research Council, told The Christian Post that while the Supreme Court decision is clear, Alabama’s high court has not contemplated the full impact of this decision on all pending orders. Chief Justice Moore was simply stating that fact.

“Chief Justice Moore has merely pointed out this lack of clarity, and noted that until the state’s high court rules with finality, the administrative order to probate judges from last March remains in effect,” said Weber.

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Christian colleges shamed by discrimination disclosures

Over 200 Christian colleges, and growing, have claimed a Title IX exemption in order to discriminate against transgendered students. But, according to the Christian Post, that’s not the story. The story is that the Department of Education is publishing a list of the schools that have done so, at the behest of those mean old human rights activists, in order to bully and embarrass those poor helpless Christians once again.

LGBT activist groups have been calling on the government to publish the list as part of a shaming campaign called the “Shame List” to pressure Christian colleges to consent to their agenda…

The article goes on to quote Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) saying, “the Department of Education has been bullying schools to comply with policies that simply do not have the force of law.”

But here’s the thing: why don’t Christian colleges want people to know they’re using taxpayer money to fund discrimination against transgendered people, as an expression of their religious belief? If they’re doing God’s will, and if God’s will is supposed to be a good thing, why are they upset that their counter-cultural witness is getting free publicity from the government?

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