A guest series by Bruce Everett

Day one – Thursday: It begins…

… or the fringe events begin, at any rate.

I’ve arrived in Melbourne, being greeted by more than a few pubs with closed doors and ‘For Sale’ signs, and hijab or ten. The voice of an invisible, satirical yokel cries in my mind ‘Sharia law! This was a Christian nation’.

We don’t have the same presence of far-right, totalitarian, Islamic groups here in Australia that Europe has. Our yokels object to Muslims, not Islam (which they don’t know anything about – ask them what they think of Wahhabism, and they’ll probably tell you they don’t like sushi), while our political left remains somewhat oblivious to the ways far-right political Islam can manifest, and don’t seem to understand why others on the left may have concerns. [Read more…]

No voodoo “cure teh gay” ads for London buses after all.

The posters, backed by Anglican Mainstream, read: “Not gay! Post-gay, ex-gay and proud. Get over it!”

The adverts were reportedly booked for two weeks by the Christian group Core Issues to display on vehicles running on five routes in central London, including top tourist destinations such as St Paul’s Cathedral, Oxford Street, Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus.

Strange idea. Imagine posters saying “Not male! Not Canadian! Not tall! Not straight! Post-male, ex-straight and proud. Get over it!”

In other words, it’s strange to think “gay” is something people should be ex-. It’s thinking that they should be getting over.

 

Good old Vision Forum and Doug Phillips and the bedbug-crazy idea that the Titanic is a Christian morality tale about men protecting women and children.

They’re having an Event. The whole thing was so much fun, you see, that they need to throw a party to celebrate it.

This April, the attention of the world will focus on the 100-year anniversary of the second-most famous ship in world history—the R.M.S Titanic. Next to Noah’s Ark, no other seagoing vessel has captured the imagination of so many. Certainly no event in history has done more to remind Western culture of the Christian doctrine of “women and children first.”

Christian? Doctrine? Who says? Where? [Read more…]

The Catholic bishops have released another Declaration of Theocracy.

Sarah Posner reports

As expected, it’s basically a rehash of the same arguments the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty has been making for almost a year. This document, though, is even more pointed and hostile than previous statements, expressing disdain for (and even a refusal to acknowledge) court rulings against the Bishops, vowing not to obey “unjust laws,” and pledging to deploy “all the energies the Catholic community can muster” to resist “totalitarian incursions against religious liberty” this summer.

In other words, theocracy. Disobey laws, disobey judges, do what the bishops say “God” says instead. That. is. theocracy. [Read more…]

Let’s reverse all trends toward greater freedom in order to attract more rabid reactionaries. What a good plan!

A London University may become the first in the country to ban alcohol from part of its campus to attract more Muslim students, its Vice Chancellor has said.

It could ban women from part of its campus, too, or it could ban just women with naked heads, or it could split the difference and ban just women not in burqas. Would that be a good plan?

London Metropolitan University is considering banning the sale of alcohol from some parts of the campus because a “high percentage” of students consider drinking “immoral,” Prof Malcolm Gillies said.

One-fifth of the University’s students are Muslim, and of those the majority are women. It is an issue of “cultural sensitivity” to provide drink-free areas, Prof Gillies told a conference, adding he was “not a great fan of alchol on campus”.

It’s likely that a high percentage of students consider bans on alcohol immoral, too. Four fifths of the University’s students are not Muslim; is there an issue of “cultural sensitivity” to refrain from banning alcohol in places where it’s currently allowed?

Professor Gillies said the University was “much more cautious” about the portrayal of sex on campus than universities had been 30 or 40 years ago, the Times Higher Education reported.

Many of its female Muslim students “can only really go to university within four miles of home and have to be delivered and picked up by a close male relative”, he said.

“Now we’ve got a younger generation that are often exceedingly conservative, and we need to be much more cautious about [sex] too.”

Power to the conservatives! Let’s everybody go backward! Soon no women will be allowed to do anything unless accompanied by a close male relative. Utopia!

 

Rebecca took it.

It’s nicer than that stinking letter.

What Jessica Ahlquist got in the mail.

Another purveyor of candy warns that without candy everyone will turn to heroin.

Another producer of slasher movies warns that without slasher movies people will start driving their cars up onto the sidewalks.

Another executive of a tobacco company warns that without cigarettes everyone will weigh 800 lbs and all the chairs will break.

Another bishop warns that without Christianity you get Stalin and Hitler, and the Telegraph solemnly reports it as if it were both important and true.

The Rt Rev Mark Davies used his Easter Homily to express anxiety at the consequences of undermining Britain’s religious heritage.

He cited the recent history of Europe to voice fears extremism would fill the void if Christianity was [sic] weakened.

“It has, indeed, been the experience of this past century, as both Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have observed[,] how the most poisonous ideologies have arisen within the Christian nations of Europe,” he said.

 

So now they’ve started arresting women…

An Idaho woman arrested for inducing her own abortion is taking her case to federal court. Jennie Linn McCormack was charged last year under an obscure Idaho law for ending her pregnancy with RU-486.

…

McCormack won’t talk about the day she had an abortion. She’s following her attorney’s advice. But here’s what the public record says.

In late 2010, McCormack learned she was pregnant. The father was out of the picture. Her youngest was barely two and she was living off child support checks.

Getting an abortion would have cost at least $500 and required multiple trips back and forth to a clinic hours away. So, McCormack turned to the rising number of Internet suppliers of abortion pills.

Now, this is where the story gets more complicated. RU-486 is medically recommended only within the first nine weeks of pregnancy. It turns out that  McCormack was way past that although she said she didn’t realize it at the time.

After she aborted the fetus she was horrified by how far along it seemed. Possibly as much as 20 weeks. McCormack confided in a friend. It was this friend’s sister that tipped off the police.

The police, who knocked on the door…

 

Remember the baby girl in Bangalore whose father punched her because he wanted a boy?

Well, she died.

For nearly a week, the three-month-old fought as hard as she could in hospital, despite a father who established through brute force that she was unwanted. This morning, Baby Afreen died 30 minutes after a cardiac arrest in a government hospital – the third that she visited in the last seven days with her teenaged mother. She was buried later in the day.

Baby Afreen’s father, Umar Farooq, was arrested on Sunday for allegedly assaulting his only child. He has reportedly confessed to the police that he hit his only child because he had wanted a son. Afreen’s mother, Reshma Bano, is 19 years old. She has offered conflicting accounts of how often her husband hit the baby.

But last week, with her baby bruised and bitten, Reshma rushed to hospital.  Afreen arrived at Bangalore’s Vani Vilas hospital three days ago, with bleeding and swelling in her brain. This morning, doctors say, she slipped into a coma after a series of convulsions that began last evening.  Doctors have been circumspect about revealing the details of the physical abuse she suffered, but they say she had bite marks and burns.

…

Her parents say Farooq had a record of beating Reshma. Policemen dissuaded them from registering a complaint. “Give him a chance, let them work it out,” was the advice they allegedly offered to Reshma’s father, Abdul Karim.

Give him a chance to what? Hit harder? Hit more often? Bite? Burn?