I want to hear the rest of this talk, because I’m wondering about that “building a relationship with your readers”.
I think “relationship” might be too sensitive a word for “throw out lots of bloody gobbets of freshly hacked up meat so the readers will tear them apart instead of you”. Ride the tiger, baby.
A Republican congressman from Indiana, Mark Souder, is resigning. He’s one of those conservative, abstinence-only sorts of politicians who uses family, family, family to flog his politics for him, so it’s no surprise that the reason he’s quitting is that he got caught with his pants down in an affair.
But sit down, here’s the part you will not believe: it was a heterosexual fling! Maybe he should get a medal from his party for confounding expectations.
Texas has been using their excessive and unwarranted influence on textbook content to insert right-wing propaganda and lies into the entire nation’s school books. I am pleased to see that California has taken the first steps to reduce Texas wingnuts’ influence. A California lawmaker has introduced Senate Bill 1451, a law that calls out Texas for its biased agenda, and mandates the formation of review panels to screen new textbooks for violation of the apolitical and non-discriminatory requirements of public school textbooks. Here’s the relevant text:
(f) Section 60044 of the Education Code prohibits instructional
material to be used in schools that contains any matter reflecting
adversely upon persons because of their race, color, creed, national
origin, ancestry, sex, handicap, or occupation, as well as any
sectarian or denominational doctrine or propaganda contrary to law.(g) On March 12, 2010, the Texas Board of Education, which
consists of 15 elected members statewide, voted to adopt revisions to
their social studies curriculum for the 2010-11 school year
(formally referred to as revisions to Texas Administrative Code,
Title 19, Chapter 113, Subchapters A-C, and Texas Administrative
Code, Title 19, Chapter 118, Subchapter A).(h) Although not yet formally adopted, it is widely presumed that
the proposed changes to Texas’ social studies curriculum will have a
national impact on textbook content since Texas is the second largest
purchaser of textbooks in the United States, second only to
California.(i) As proposed, the revisions are a sharp departure from widely
accepted historical teachings that are driven by an inappropriate
ideological desire to influence academic content standards for
children in public schools.(j) The proposed changes in Texas, if adopted and subsequently
reflected in textbooks nationwide, pose a serious threat to Sections
51204.5, 60040, 60041, 60043, and 60044 of the Education Code as well
as a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and
academic content standards in California.SEC. 2. Section 60020.8 is added to the Education Code, to read:
60020.8. Upon the next adoption of the History-Social Science
Curriculum Framework, the state board shall ensure the framework is
consistent with provisions governing instructional materials,
including, but not limited to, Sections 51204.5, 60040, 60041,
60042, 60043, 60044, 60048, 60200.5, and 60200.6.SEC. 3. Section 60050 of the Education Code is amended to read:
60050. (a) The state board shall adopt regulations to govern the
social content reviews conducted at the request of a publisher or
manufacturer of instructional materials outside the primary and
followup instructional material adoption processes. A social content
review is intended to determine compliance with Sections
51204.5, 60040, 60041, 60042, 60043, 60044, 60048, 60200.5, and
60200.6, and the guidelines for social content adopted by the state
board.
It’s not a huge step, and I imagine publishers will be scrambling to produce books that fit Texan demands without being blatantly right-wing…which probably means they’ll be watered down into even more tepid pap. But at least it’s going in the right direction in putting up an intellectual barrier around the Texas aberration, marking it as a scholastic pariah state.
I encourage young people to organize and promote freethought — it’s the way we’ll grow and become more influential. But there’s no denying that sometimes it is hard, with even friendly, innocuous groups receiving public opposition. People resent the fact that other people don’t need their god.
Here’s a great example: Rising Sun High School in Maryland has the standard default take-it-for-granted attitude that Christianity is just fine — there’s the usual well-funded and usually teacher-promoted evangelical groups, like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes — and when one student tried to form a club for non-religious students…well, you can guess what happened. All their signs were torn down and destroyed, and the students were threatened by their peers. There were also letters to the editor of the local paper.
My daughter comes home today and informs me they have started a new club in Rising Sun High School. The club is known as NRS, which stands for Non Religious Society.
The members of this club have proceeded to hang posters along the halls of the school. When a student tore the posters down, because they offended him, he got suspended from school. Apparently the students are not allowed to touch these posters.
To say I was shocked is putting it mildly. My daughter does not hang posters of her Catholic religion throughout the school, and I expect the same type of respect from others. We cannot control what others think or their beliefs, nor do we want to. But I will not have this type of atrocity taking place without having my voice heard.
My daughter has my permission, if she sees these posters around school, to put up her own. I challenge the principal to say one thing about this. I guarantee you do not want a religious war taking place, as I have God on my side and you’ll lose.
Schools usually have policies about what can be posted on the walls; random messages and commercial ads and that sort of thing are no-nos, but announcements of student events and groups are just fine. If his daughter wants to set up an organization for Catholic students, that shouldn’t be a problem. But that’s not what’s bother this jerk, obviously: he’s irate that a godless organization even exists.
It is now the end of the school year, and that means it is time for the yearbook, when students and student organizations are all acknowledged. Except, unfortunately, for the Non-Religious Solutions student group, which has been blackballed and is not mentioned anywhere. The Christian groups are proudly represented, however. Here are some excerpts from the yearbook:
“The FCA… is an outstanding embodiment of Christian spirit.”
“Students gather together… to reflect on their on (sic) God.”
“…lesson is presented in the form of Bible readings,”
“Before closing, everyone gathers in the center of the room to join hands in prayer.”
“…the opportunity to pray with their fellow students to revel in what God has done for them.”
“Every meeting is finished by joining hands in prayer to prepare for the oncoming day.”
Well, aren’t they a fine bunch of pious toadies. It’s fine for the book to recognize that there are large numbers of sanctimonious public exhibitors of their superstition in the school — they are there, and it’s right that they be represented — but it is simple exclusionist bigotry that the staff decided that NRS would not be mentioned at all.
Wanna bet that the reason is that cretinous parents like the Catholic daddy quoted above put pressure on them?
It’s not all good news: Jonathan Katz may have lost a position, but someone who had much more power to do good keeps his. Our Minnesota governor, Tim Pawlenty, is also a homophobic jerk—he just vetoed a bill that promoted some common decency, giving gay partners a few end-of-life rights and responsibilities, so gay people could make decisions about disposition of the body at the death of a partner, for instance. It was a bill that did not go so far as to legalize gay marriage, but simply acknowledged that grieving gay people ought not to be barred from making decisions about the people they love.
And Governor Pawlenty shot down basic human decency, making noises about defining marriage as “between a man and a woman” and how he opposes efforts to “treat domestic relationships as the equivalent of traditional marriage”. He’s a rotten excuse for a human being.
But then, he is a Republican.
The pandering slimeball is angling for a presidential nomination in the next election, and he knows the only way the Republicans will pay attention to him is if he plays up more bigotry and hatred. He’s going to be sidling farther and farther rightward in the next few years, and it’s not going to be good for Minnesota.
I remember Joycelyn Elders. The woman was appointed to the position of surgeon general, and when asked about masturbation at a conference on AIDS, she replied, “I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.” It was a perfectly ordinary comment about something nearly everyone does or has done, and she got fired for it, by Bill Clinton. It was part of my disillusionment and disappointment with the Democrats.
Now look who Obama has appointed to a team to assist with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico: Jonathan I. Katz. He’s not quite a climate change denialist, but the next best thing: he agrees that the climate is warming, that it’s anthropogenic, but tells us that it’s good for us, and we ought to stop research on it. At the same time, he’s doing research on geoengineering to counteract global warming. I’m confused. I think he’s confused.
But here’s what made me think of Joycelyn Elders. Katz is a self-admitted, flaming homophobe, and he’s proud of it. Literally. He comes right out and says it while blaming gays for killing innocent people (the deaths of gays, of course, were there own damn fault).
Unfortunately, the victims are not only those whose reckless behavior brought death on themselves. There are many completely innocent victims, too: hemophiliacs (a substantial fraction died as a result of contaminated clotting factor), recipients of contaminated transfusions, and their spouses and children, for AIDS can be transmitted heterosexually (in America, only infrequently) and congenitally. The icy road was lined with unsuspecting innocents, who never chose to ride a motorcycle. Guilt for their deaths is on the hands of the homosexuals and intravenous drug abusers who poisoned the blood supply. These people died so the sodomites could feel good about themselves.
What of those cursed with unnatural sexual desires? Must they forever suppress these desires? Yes, but this is hardly a unique fate. Almost everyone has desires which must be suppressed. Most men and women think adulterous thoughts fairly often, and find themselves attracted to members of the opposite sex to whom they are not married. Morality requires them to suppress these desires, and most do not commit adultery, though they feel lust in their hearts. Almost everyone, at one time or another, covets another’s property. They do not steal. Many people feel great anger or intense hatred at some time in their lives. They do not kill.
I am a homophobe, and proud.
This is what I don’t get. Joycelyn Elders could make an accurate, honest, and relevant comment about the fact that masturbation is a part of human sexuality, and that if we’re concerned about sexually transmitted diseases, it is a reasonable alternative outlet for sexual urges…and she got fired for it.
Jonathan Katz writes stupid and wrong comments about how gay people are killers, and says that they should completely suppress their sexual urges…and he gets a distinguished appointment from the Obama administration.
However, there is some good news here. People complained, and the administration listened: Katz has been dismissed from the position. Maybe there is some hope after all.
Now we just get to sit back and wait for the wingnuts to start complaining about the exclusion of bigotry.
The unending thread drifted onto the topic of cooking…but as usual, all the threads here always revolve around arguments. Then I realized that every thread is just another Abbott and Costello routine.
(Current totals: 10,234 entries with 996,226 comments)
I’m glad someone occasionally looks into the other side of the net to see what they’re talking about — I can’t bear to read religious forums, myself. Here’s why: take a look at what they’re saying on BaptistBoard.
I believe women in politics have done a great disservice to the sovereignty and resolve of a our great Republic. Many issues that face our nation, from without and within, need to be decided from a place of strength instead of weakness. Women are gifted from God with a lot of skills that are good in the home, but not in the Government. They tend to base their decisions from a security standpoint and believe that they have the ability to rehabilitate and nurse others to mental and social health. Men are more pragmatic and can make the tough calls that have to be made in matters of war, also in domestic and international policy. Maybe I should have said men used to be able to make the tough calls. Women in politics have been in position so long now that men are not the men they once were. They have to take into account how their decisions and policies will be viewed by the ladies. Being weak, pathetic, and a bunch of pansies being entrusted with positions of power are all the result of this great error.
Even the loons there who disagree with this nonsense are saying it’s because God gave men and women complementary abilities!
I’m also greatly offended. One consequence of that attitude is that, in order to be True Men™, we have to be ignorant, brutal, and ready to go off to war whenever our testicles tingle…and if you aren’t, you’re a “pansy”. It’s a bias that is as demeaning to men as it is to women.
In 2002, 15 young girls burned to death in a school fire because firemen were not allowed by their religion to enter and rescue females who might not be covered head-to-toe in concealing clothing. In fact, religious police had actively hindered the escape of the girls, with reports that they were hitting them and pushing them back into the building, because they were trying to run out without putting their head coverings on first.
Now, in 2010, the religious ministry has given orders to the religious police to allow even male rescue workers to enter girls’ schools in an emergency.
Wow. So it only took them 8 years to figure out that maybe lives are more important than modesty.
This is terrible news: one of the very best blogs on Scienceblogs, or anywhere, Effect Measure, is shutting down. It’s a sad day; it was one of the blogs I turned to every day, and especially on Sundays for the Freethinker Sermonette. Revere has made a personal decision to move on to other ventures, which is good for him but deprives me of some good writing.
He has passed the public health torch to another blog, The Pump Handle, which is good…and also cruel. He set the bar very high with good writing, humanity, and progressive values, and now this new blog on Sb will have to try to meet those high standards. Ouch. It’s good to have goals, but they should be reachable, you know.
I guess I’ll just have to keep an eye on The Pump Handle and hope they can fill the gap Revere has left here.
