The slaughter of the innocents (or are you REALLY Christian? Pro-life?)

I am "watching" a show on Christmas Carols and they are discussing songs about the slaughter of the innocents ("The Coventry Carol", Byrd's "Christmas Lullaby", etc.) . Wouldn't the failure of the "pro-gun/pro-life Christians" to address the modern slaughter of the innocents relate to this in some way? I think about this and a modern slaughter of the innocents and the failure to address this by people who call themselves "Christians".

Yes, I am talking about what happened in Connecticut during this season.  And all the other children who die from firearms in the US.

I shouldn't need to explain what this refers to in the gospel.

Come on: have you actually read that book you claim to believe in or are you a bunch of lazy fucks who think they can be "saved" by mere belief and a failure to act on what you claim to believe in?

A "Christian" ex-girlfriend pointed out to me that Christ was pretty emphatic that you needed to ACT in a way consistent with his teaching.

Otherwise you are just one of the Pharisees.

In this case, you can side with Herod and tolerate the slaughter of innocents.

Or you can realise that life is really sacred and that deadly force should indeed be a last resort, only to be used when all other options have been exhausted.

If you side with Christ and are truly pro-life, then you need to abandon the horrible sin that is the "pro-gun" and "gun right" movement since that is what you claim to believe.

Otherwise, you may find out the truth when you arrive at the "last judgement", but hope like fuck that I am wrong.

But, I think things will be very hot for you in your hell.

(Although, I know my "Christian" ex-girlfriend is happy for the time being).

RFRA RAH RAH / Conservative Rifraff

bad religion logo

RFRA is not a justification for discrimination, no matter how conservatives try to use and abuse it.  This use of RFRA and of religious belief are wrong, bad, and flat out evil.  It is also generally, broadly illegal.

Those conservatives who seem to be bent on misusing freedom of religion are wrong, but they also tend to be the riffraff, the fringe, the mouth breathers, knuckle daggers, Bible-thumping mouth-foamers of the radical right who are too cray-cray to merit serious consideration. 

These are the extremists who have hijacked the GOP.  The GOP needs to hijack their party back, they need to expel these crazy extremists, or the party will fracture and die out, like the Whigs which preceded them.

That does not seem to stop them from trying to get attention or their evil and hateful way.

Conservatives as the right side of the political spectrum, regardless of parties, has always been pro-discrimination, pro-unequal treatment,pro-injustice,  pro-subordination of others.  We have had to pass civil rights laws, and had ill treatment adjudicated BECAUSE conservatives won't treat people fairly and equally without the coercion of law.  Rather we see conservatives having used terrible violence to coerce conformity to their discrimination.

Conservatives also believe in an 'immaculate conception' notion of business creation, by which I mean the belief that any business can be created without the contribution of others, notably government provided services like infrastructure (roads, utilities, educated workforce, customers, fire and police services, etc.).  Nope, it's just the business owner and divine fertilization, in the minds of conservatives.

This is factually false.  But it is also the core premise underlying the current attempt by conservatives to claim a right of businesses to discriminate, and to assert a religious right to treat people differently by refusing service to some (aka public accommodation).

I cannot come up with a better definition of public accommodation than that offered by wikipedia:

Within U.S. law, public accommodations are generally defined as entities, both public and private, that are used by the public. Examples include retail stores, rental establishments and service establishments, as well as educational institutions, recreational facilities and service centers. Private clubs and religious institutions were exempt. However, in 1984, the United States Supreme Court declared the previously all-male Junior Chamber International, a chamber of Commerce organization for persons between the ages of eighteen and thirty-six, to be a public accommodation, which compelled the admission of women into the ranks.

One of the premises of a right of the public to service is that the public provides the context and framework, the infrastructure, in which business operates, and which are essential to business to exist.  But more than that, it is a foundational premise of equality that people be able to expect equal treatment in the public sphere, that separate is not equal, that disparate or inferior is not fair or equal, and that refusal of service causes harm.

Courtesy of Findlaw for a partial list of court cases relating to civil rights decisions relating to the conservative laws being overturned that mandated or gave legal cover to discriminate, INCLUDING ON THE BASIS OF SINCERELY HELD RELIGIOUS BELIEFS:

Shelley v Kramer, 1948, overturned the right to exclude property sales on the basis of race, used to keep neighborhoods segregated;  

Brown v Board of Education 1954 and 55(I and II) ended segregated education, invalidating separate but equal (hint: it was never equal, but consistently inferior);

Bailey v Patterson, 1962, overturned segregation of transportation facilities (public or private, inter and intrastate);

Loving v Virginia, 1967, overturned prohibitions of inter-racial marriage, in which the Bible and sincerely held religious beliefs about the separation of the races figured prominently;

Jones v Mayer, 1968, another decision that prohibits in property sales and property rentals, (regardless of sincerely held religious belief, or any other pretext or justification);

Griggs v Duke Power Co., 1971, (yes - THAT Duke Power that funds/ owns conservative candidates) overturned discriminatory education and IQ testing for employment (again, based in part on a sincerely held religious-based belief in racial differences);

Oncale v Sundowner Offshore Serv., Inc. 1987 banned same-sex sexual harassment violated the provision of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964  (the court did not make an exception for sincerely held religious beliefs motivating harassment or bullying);

Add to this list any of the Bob Jones University court decisions that religion or religious beliefs (sincere or otherwise) was not an excuse or legal pretext for discrimination; also

Heart of Atlanta Motel Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964),  that the U.S. Congress could use the Constitution's Commerce Clause to force private businesses to abide by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

This has not been an encyclopedic listing of cases, rather it is a sampling only.  Religion is not a legitimate or legal basis for discrimination.  In some locations, like the state of Oregon, these protections extend to gender and sexual orientation, and this has been the trend in civil rights.

The right to accommodation, the right regardless of race to service by businesses was settled in the last century -- and not the END of the last century either.  In the latter 19th and first half of the 20th century, sincerely held religious beliefs that the races should be separate, (because 'the Bible') was a large part of the justification used by conservative bigots to find ways to subordinate and restrict and oppress black Americans, and to exercise prejudice against other groups, notably Jews and Catholics, and atheists.  Now that is extending to those Jews and Christians and other groups who do not conform to their interpretation of religious belief.

That is not decent or spiritual, that is not freedom, that is not "all men (and women) are created equal".  That is not our constitution, that is contrary to the essence of community and contrary to the concept of majority rule (with protections for minorities).

We saw in the last election Mitts-on-our-Money Romney's big GOP convention stressed empty chairs and "I created that" notions of businesses being solely the creation of their founders. The premise totally and completely ignored the essential community support and services - and customers - that were essential to the creation and growth of those businesses.  There was a denial that any other factors, from services to labor, contributed to the creation of business.

We're seeing the bitter end of bigotry being stripped of legal cover in discrimination against members for the LGBT community.  ENDA is inevitable, the only question becomes when not if.  It may or may not happen as the SCOTUS is currently constituted, given it is the most conservative court in our history, but it is unlikely that the SCOTUS will remain that conservative or that religion will trump civil rights in the public sphere.

GIGO: Islamophobia, the Ridiculous Radical Religious Right, and Hate Crimes

Remember when....... pick one.......the state of (blank) passed laws banning Sharia law?  There's more coming.

A panel of local Muslims last week denounced the state’s ban on a foreign law designed to bar Sharia or Islamic law.

“Folks were in this hysteria thinking that the minority Muslim Community here in North Carolina could somehow impose our laws, laws taken from the Sharia,” Imam Khalid Griggs of Community Mosque said at a forum on the subject held Tuesday, Jan. 27 at the Polo Recreation Center
...Proponents of the bans say they protect the Constitution, but many disagree. Muslim groups have been joined by Jewish organizations in their opposition to the bans. The Anti-Defamation League in Florida opposed that state’s foreign law ban, which passed last year, for fear of its potential effects on alimony, child custody and even the ability to remarry for Jews who divorce in Israel."

The right is wrong, and has been wrong since Barry Goldwater said this:

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!

But Goldwater was correct when he noted, as an ardent opponent of the religious right:

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies.

Ironically, both quotes are from Goldwater's presidential nomination acceptance speech in San Francisco waaaaay back in 1964.

That right wing extremism has resulted in actual hate crimes.  No, not the shooting of the three Muslim students in North Carolina, but in more clear and obvious and genuine hate crimes like the burning of a Mosque in Ohio by an Indiana man 'riled up' by Fox News.

But there is plenty of hate to go around with out actual violence, like regarding the arson attack on a Muslim Center in Texas, where a person misrepresenting himself to be a fireman used social media to post this:

We have plenty of hate, by the right, from the right, riling up people with purely evil right wing propaganda full of lies.

There is a real tragedy that OPPOSING the evils and abuses of religion, like the ones below, from any and every religion, wherever it occurs, is being miscontrued as a hate crime in what appears to be an ordinary, every day case of gun violence by a man in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the tragic shooting deaths of three Muslim students by a man obsessed like George Zimmerman with trying to dominate and intimidate a wide variety of people in his immediate neighborhood with his excessive gun collection, a man who had apparent anger issues.

There are a lot of things to criticize Craig Hicks for, but being an Islamophobe is not one of them, nor should being Anti-Theist.   This is a case where the Left wing media has it wrong, in generalizing that being Anti-religion generally for what is wrong with religious oppression and conflict is the same as being Anti-Muslim.  And of course the Right has it wrong as well.  The promoting of Islamophobia was one of the things Hicks opposed.  Hicks was indicted by a grand jury yesterday, per MSNBC news:

A grand jury indicted a North Carolina man on Monday for the shooting deaths of a newlywed Muslim couple and the wife's sister last week, a court official said.
Craig Hicks, 46, of Chapel Hill, was charged by a grand jury with three counts of first-degree murder and one of discharging a firearm into an occupied dwelling, said Angela Kelly, an assistant clerk of the Durham County Superior Court.
Investigators have said initial findings indicate a dispute over parking prompted the shooting, but they are looking into whether Hicks was motivated by hatred toward the victims because they were Muslim.

A new law to ban Sharia law is being introduced in Montana, following passage in other states, and of course the overturning of such a ban after Oklahoma passed one. From another apparent Islamophobe/ bigot, in the Examiner:

Montana's Senate Bill 199–also called the Primacy of Montana Law–would prohibit the state from abiding by foreign religious customs and foreign laws within the court system. Well there's an idea! A United States that follows United States laws. I'm getting excited already. Maybe we'll even follow the Constitution one day. Janna Taylor, a Republican state senator in Montana, said that the bill is modeled after a similar anti-Sharia law that has been passed by Republicans in three other states so far: Tennessee, Kansas and Louisiana.

Of course, the islamophobe bigots CLAIM, wrongly, that they support the U.S. Constitution as well as their state constitutions. They just forget that we have the supremacy clause, which establishes that where there is a conflict between Federal and State law, Federal law 'wins' aka usually supersedes state law.

We have in this country, and have always had, religious courts in parallel to our secular court system.  In Christianity it is Canon law, versions of which are practiced by Roman Catholics, Eastern Rite Christianity, Anglicans and Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists, Lutherans, and in some forms by Quakers and the Amish.  Judaism has Halacha (aka Halakha) law and courts, and Islam in this country has Sharia.

An example of how a religious court operates would be the requirement for both a SECULAR legal decision and a religious one to end a marriage, either by divorce or annulment in some faiths and the requirement to do so by secular courts as well, before one can marry, IF one's religion has that requirement (and some do).  In other instances religious courts are purely advisory, for example on the finer points of keeping Kosher or Halal.

If you don't want to go through the religious courts, then no one requires it for secular purposes; it is entirely voluntary as a matter of religious faith and conscience.

But the ridiculous radical religious right deliberately misrepresents this, ginning up fear that Sharia law is somehow a threat to replace secular law.  It never has been and never would or could be; this is pure propaganda, complete ignorance pandering to the gullible, looking for an excuse to express their hatred for anyone who does not conform to their belief or will. From the same source above:

At least individual states are finally taking matters into their own hands to stop the travesty of Sharia law in America. The Christian Action Network noted on its website that Sharia law, also called Islamic law, has been used in United States courts multiple times to override America's law under the guise of Freedom of Religion. Of course! Freedom of Religion is suddenly important when it involves catering to the violent religion of Islam. However, if you take your Bible to the public square you better have on a bullet proof vest and when you demand protection from your President against foreign and domestic threats you get psycho-babble about the Crusades.
The Christian Action Network site went on to say: “Montana may be on the brink of accomplishing what Congress, the federal court system and all but three other states could not: Banning Islamic Shariah law from being used in state courts.”

There is NO case, whatsoever, ANYWHERE in the United States, its possessions or territories, at any time, that any religious law, Sharia, Halacha, or Canon law, has been used to override American law.

Another example of this kind of fear mongering and hate peddling is occurring across right wing media over a Sharia court in Irving Texas.  Specifically, a proposal for a ban on Sharia law in Mississippi is referencing that religious court, from the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN):

Lawmakers in Mississippi are proposing legislation that would ban Sharia law from the state.

"I think we need to make a stand and a statement that we are not going to allow it to be used in our court system," state Rep. John Moore, R-Brandon, said.

More than two dozen states have considered similar bans on the laws followed in Muslim nations.

A group of Muslims in northern Texas has created what may be the first official Sharia law system in the United States. 

The Sharia tribunal in Irving, Texas, said they're not planning to follow the type of Sharia practiced in Muslim countries, where severe punishments are handed out for even small crimes, women have very few rights, and blasphemy against Mohammed can result in a death sentence.

But in Mississippi, Rep. Moore recently introduced a meaure that blocks any foreign laws from being enforced or applied in the state and country.

He made clear that Sharia law is a big concern and wants to make sure it never gets argued in a Mississippi courtroom.

He said a Muslim defendent could try to use Sharia law as a defense against a U.S. criminal case.

This is a right wing lie; no one has succeeded in using such a defense, nor is it a defense attempt unique to one religion.  The closest we have come to a problem with a religious law interfering with the function of civil and criminal secular law was the abuse by the Roman Catholic church in conducting their own investigations under Canon Law instead of immediately reporting all accusations of sex crimes.  This led to priests being protected by the Church from legal action, including prosecution  under cover of priests being subject to Canon Law rather than civil and criminal secular law, as we see in the findings of subsequent law suits and investigative reports by journalists.

So we see the ridiculous, radical, religious right engaging in the most vile hypocrisy when it comes to outlawing Canon Law, and instead obsessing factually falsely about Sharia Law, as a justification and pretence for raging bigotry and Islamophobia.

You can't fix stupid - and stupid kills people

I frequently point out that conservatives routinely, consistently, persistently, and dogmatically believe things which are factually false, are based on flawed reasoning, and is resistant to the obvious evidence of bad outcomes. 

We have the highest incidence of new cases of contagious diseases, disease which had been presumed eradicated, in the last 20 years.  Why? Because of conservative stupidity.

Their rejection of fact and science is ideologically driven to the exclusion of any objective reality that does not conform to that ideology.

It is a system of beliefs that is stupid, not just annoying stupid, but deadly dangerously stupid.

We see right wing nutters like Alex Jones promote factually false fearmongering about vaccines.  The principle vaccine myth - one that is easily debunked - is about mercury.  Child vaccines do not contain mercury; there are only trace amounts in SOME specific adult vaccines -- and then only in the multi-dose containers.  CLEARLY, the benefits of preventing microbial growth far outweighs any negatives.  There is no link, zero link, between vaccines and side effects wrongly attributed to them, like autism.  People DO risk allergic reactions, but we all face that risk, anytime we do or try something new - our first bee sting, the first time we eat shellfish or peanut butter, etc.

There are far more people impaired or killed by these diseases than are harmed by allergy reactions, which while they can be extreme, are mostly quite mild.

The anti-vaxxers are the modern equivalent of the anti-Fluoridation of our water to prevent cavities as a prophylactic.  Then the right wing nuts, like the John Birchers, insisted -- also without any factual evidence to support it -- that fluoridation in water was a communist plot to promote mind control.


The facts are quite different. From Sciencebasedlife.com:

Fluoridation is generally known as the addition of fluoride to the municipal water supply. However, what most people do not know is that fluoridation can also mean the removal of excess fluoride that occurs naturally in groundwater. Fluoride is a natural component of groundwater, and it occurs naturally everywhere in the world, in varying amounts. The process of fluoridation is to adjust the fluoride content of the water to the most healthful level.

Years of research and testing in different cities and states, conducted by the National Health Service, has determined that one part per million is the ideal proportion, giving a substantial protection from tooth decay, and avoiding dental fluorosis. Ever since then, it has been the standard practice to regulate fluoride levels in municipal water supplies to one part per million. There has been broad scientific and medical consensus for decades that one part per million of fluoride is best for health, and exactly zero rigorously conducted scientific trials that have indicated any sign of danger. For all practical purposes, it is an over-and-done-with issue.

An over-and-done-with issue.  Like anthropogenic climate change.  Like the sciences that support Evolution.  Like the concerns about child vaccinations causing autism because of mercury as a preservative in vaccines.

Arresting Developments: The Wacky Religious Right Fake Arrests

Whiny conservatives like to claim they are the victims of a "war on Christians".

There is no 'war on Christians', but they enjoy pretending to be victims when they aren't.  It forms part of their pretext for being jerks and jack-asses, and their demands for special, privileged treatment, and for their justification to insult and  mistreat others.

This is in the larger context of Christian churches actually being victimized, by being burned to the ground by homophobic arsonists for having been PRO- inclusive of the Gay/LGBT community in their services.  You know  - REAL Christians versus the bigots who use religion as a pretext for their hate.  There was an example in 2012, in Bloomingville, Ohio where the pastor also received death threats. That I think presents a sharp contrast and context to the real victims from the fake victims.

So, why this stupidity, eighteen months later?

In February there was a law suit filed to over-turn the Ohio same-sex marriage ban.  There have been more than half a dozen such successful suits across the country in red states like Oklahoma, Utah, Texas and just last week in Kentucky, among others.  And gay rights supporters want to put legalizing gay marriage on the ballot in 2014 in Ohio.

Good Christian bigots have to do something, no matter how stupid or offensive.  I suppose we should be glad that it doesn't involve flaming torches and gasoline.

There is such a lack of actual causes for complaint, they've been reduced to staging them for themselves.  Of course, when they post the videos of the staged 'war on Christians', they omit to mention the fakery.

The video was circulated without adequate explanation; now that it has received attention, the religious right wing nuts have been embarrassed into removing them, and radical right wing sites have updated and corrected false reports about it.

The video was posted as "Pastors Arrested For Defending the Faith".  Except of course, that was not true.




Now as noted by Huff Po, the local sheriff is in trouble for going along with this stupidity - as well they should be criticized.

Deputies of Ohio's Summit County Sheriff Steve Barry have come under fire from their community for a video of the officers arresting three pastors in front of their congregations and handcuffing them, supposedly for the crime of "defending their faith."
However, the arrests were fake -- staged as part of a marketing strategy for an upcoming drama, "Defending the Faith," which will take place at the Akron, Oh. civic center, according to Akron Beacon Journal.
Nonetheless, some churchgoers were upset by the dramatic antics, prompting Barry to release a statement explaining that it wasn't real. “I want to clarify that none of the arrests were real. It was all part of a skit that went along with the pastors’ sermons that day,” he said. “I knew it was being filmed, but I thought it was only going to be shown to the congregation. Once it got out there on the Web, people were commenting about how disgusting we were to interrupt church services to effect an arrest."

So, now the question remains - who has learned from this rather spectacular mistake? We must hope the sheriff's won't do this again.  But the churches clearly have not caught on to the lesson of the boy who cried wolf, and want to 'cry wolf' some more.  Continuing from the Huff Po:

[Edra Frazier, Marketing Director] deems the stunts successful and will organize more "arrests" as the lead up to the production goes on. “Our hope is that as sheriff’s deputies continue to make their way to churches throughout the community, members of that congregation will see that their pastors truly are defenders of the faith,” she said. “Even though it starts with a negative image of a pastor being arrested, this is a dramatic way to deliver the positive message that our spiritual leaders are doing a lot of good in our community."

I can only wonder what the heck the people in the offices of the Sheriff's Department were thinking when they agreed to this.  The potential for this action to be both misinterpreted, misrepresented, and misused is huge.  I can only hope they were well paid for their time and efforts, the way they might be compensated for appearing in any commercial movie.  If not then they should be investigated not only for their appallingly stupid conduct, but for misuse of departmental employees and property.  Perhaps someone forgot that these are public vehicles and that when in uniform and on duty, they are working on the public nickel.  This appears to be one more example of the religious radical right trying to claim special privileges at the expense of the rest of us.

From the AP and Fox8 in Cleveland:

Mock Arrests of Ohio Pastors Create Confusion

AKRON, Ohio (AP) — The staged arrests of pastors in front of their congregations in northeast Ohio got a surprising reaction for one sheriff.
Videos of the mock arrests posted online brought a wave of criticism for the Summit County Sheriff’s office from people who thought the deputies really were interrupting church services to make arrests.
Sheriff Steve Barry says his deputies took part in the mock arrests Sunday at a couple churches around Akron after the pastors approached his office and asked it to participate.
The churches staged the arrests as part of their “Defending the Faith” sermons. Videos showed deputies handcuffing pastors while they preached and placing them in patrol cars.
The sheriff says he wishes that those who put the videos online would have noted that the events had been staged.

WHY is the Radical Religious Right pushing PRO-Discrimination Laws under the guise of religious freedom?

In Arizona, there are five municipalities, including Phoenix, which have local anti-discrimination ordinances that prohibit treating gays (or disabled people, etc.) differently in service/accommodation, in housing, in hiring and so on.  The number of people living in these municipalities comprise roughly one third of the AZ population.

Most large corporations routinely require the same fair and equal treatment of people in their internal corporate rules and regs.  Passing such ordinances was seen as making those communities more attractive to potential employers who could offer the state - and the cities - well paying jobs.

Outside those municipalities, any kind of discrimination against LGBT people was and is perfectly legal.  Further, state law outweighs municipal laws, so any law suit under those ordinances has at best limited use.

What the advocates for these laws claim as religious freedom is false, just as you cannot discriminate against people on the basis of race claiming religious belief.  There were multiple law suits that have established that, for example in the Bob Jones University cases where discrimination was not allowed against black people, or against mixed race married couples or mixed race dating.

The arguments that are being presented, that Jewish or Muslim restaurant owners could be forced to serve pork sandwiches are false, so false they can fairly be called lies.  No one is now or has ever under the guise of anti-discrimination forced a business to provide a product or service.  What anti-discrimination has required is that if you sell something (a product or service) to others, you can't refuse to do so to a group of people because of the religion, race, gender, etc. of that group.

So no one is going to force any bakery to bake penis shaped cake --- but under anti-discrimination laws, if they DO make such cakes for heterosexual customers (like bachelorette parties) THEN they have to sell them to a gay customer too.  If you sell wedding photography to straight couples, then you have to do so to gay couples.

The one argument that is made in support of such legislation that is valid is that a photographer who provides their services to events could be required to provide them to an event with which they do not agree.  A parallel example of how that is in fact the very definition of freedom is that, for example when the National Socialist Party of America aka American Nazis versus Skokie, IL, Nazis had as much right as any other group to freedom of assembly in parading through a city where many Jewish Holocaust survivors lived.  The SCOTUS correctly decided that special protection or accommodation could be made for those people on the basis of religion, while the Nazis, however repellent they were as human beings, did have the right to freedom of assembly in public places --- and ONLY in public places.

However much radical religious right extremists wish it to be so, corporations or other businesses are not people.  PEOPLE have individual liberties; other entities have some rights as entities which are legal fictions, but they are not people.  If you are a person doing business as a business entity, then you have to abide by the laws regulating businesses, which does not include religious discrimination.

But, by the same token, political beliefs by a group are not a protected area of activity.  You can say HELL NO to a bunch of KKKluckers [members of the Klu(eless) Klux Klan] just because you don't like the glare coming off their ugly little bald skin-heads or because you object to their stupid little recycled bedsheet outfits.  You don't need the protection of freedom of religion to reject them as clients.

Likewise, there is not instance where anti-discrimination could result in someone being rounded up and forced to march in a gay pride parade.  If you are a bigot, you can't prevent such a parade, the same way aggrieved Jewish Holocaust survivors couldn't prevent a rally or a parade by offensive Nazis.  In fact, under freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, you can protest at such an event.

If you don't like selling gay wedding cakes (penis optional) or taking photos at a gay wedding, get out of the business.  You aren't protected by the Constitution from serving clients you don't like on the basis of your religion, just like you can't refuse to seat Jewish or Muslim people in your restaurant because you are a disgusting and reprehensible bigot --- so what?

Conservatives seem to have a pattern of desiring to discriminate against other people, while claiming, falsely, and usually in an annoyingly whiny way, that they are victims themselves, when they are not.

Which prompts the inevitable question -- why do conservatives persist in defining their freedom in terms of denying freedom and dignity to others, over and over and over?  Shame, shame on them.  Why as well, do conservatives persist in lying, and in trying to scare people when there is no reason for fear?

They are just silly, and perhaps they are so used to projecting their own lies on others, they can't believe anyone else is a better human being than they are.  They assume the worst, and they are wrong.

Shame on Arizona, shame on all the other states trying to legislate religious prejudice and bigotry, shame on all the states trying to promote radical right wingers taking away liberty from people. THEY are UN-AMERICAN.

No, popsie Palin, we are not a Theocracy, and this is a bad, UN-American Idea

The Republican War on Sex and Women Continues From the GoJo: Governor Herbert Vetoes Ignorance Only Sex Ed

While it does make him a more fun-sounding governor than he really is, the following headline from the web site The Governor's Journal headline - aka GoJo - seems a bit misleading.  I have to give the governor a round of applause, a sustained standing ovation, for having the necessary moral courage to take a stand on what is really ignorance only sex eduction.

The governor has taken a stand which does NOT put religion above the interests of education and public health.  Abstinence is essentially a religious position, not a moral or legal one.  As such it is one that like contraception is largely ignored in our modern society.  We have come to recognize that the notion of sex ONLY within the bounds of marriage is not realistic, not necessary, and not desirable.  We recognize that sex is NOT only about reproduction, NOT only for having children.  It is about the expression and bonding through physical intimacy that is an important part of our emotional, psychological and physical lives, and which should be exercised responsibly - but not necessarily limited to marriage. 

If we strictly restricted sex to marriage, our lives would be the poorer for it.  According to the 2000 Census:

Among the 221.1 million people aged 15 and over in the United States in 2000:

• 120.2 million, or 54.4 percent, were now married;

• 41.0 million, or 18.5 percent, were widowed, divorced or separated; and

• 59.9 million, or 27.1 percent, were never married.

Using those numbers, 100.9 million people, or 45.6% are at some point in time, possibly for their whole lives, not in a marriage.  Our lives, in part because of our greater longevity, in part for other reasons, is no longer fitting into the pattern where a majority of people are married their entire adult lives.  The choice to believe that sex outside of that narrow relationship is always a sin is a matter of individual faith, it is not a moral absolute or ethical certainty.  Rather we can choose how we conduct ourselves in our intimate relationships with love and with respect.  Marriage is a legal contract; it can when chosen as such be a religious commitment.

But to impose that BELIEF, that RELIGIOUS BELIEF, as a calculated pattern of ignorance is wrong.  It is dangerous.  It is nothing more or less than a war on human sexuality.  Ignorance does not stop people from having sex, it causes them to contract and expose each other to disease and unplanned pregnancy.  Ignorance, not sex, is what is dangerous, and costly, and burdensome to our society.

There is absolutely NO legitimate justification for making the teaching of human biology, including human sexuality, and topics like contraception, in a modern world. Trying to make it a taboo, to ban it, is guaranteed to make people stupid, ignorant, and poor citizens.  It denies people choices, it denies people informed control over their lives. 

Abstinence is a choice that each of us must make for ourselves, not have the paternalistic nanny state of conservatives impose it on us, and least of all on vulnerable children who need to learn in order to be equipped to participate in a modern world.  The conservatives in our country fear they cannot persuade, so they use ignorance, and misinformation to try to control people - and they do it badly.  They do it in a way that harms people bodies and their minds and their hearts.  They do it in a way that destroys lives. That is not what religion should do, and it is most certainly not what 'Ignorance Only' education should do.

Ignorance only sex education is opposed by every major medical and psychological professional organization in the United States.  From the Sex Ed in the U.S. article on Wikipedia (as always, emphasis added is mine - DG)

These people on the right who keep passing abstinence only / ignorance only sex education legislation believe that we need values taught in conjunction with education about our bodies and our sexuality and our choices.  There is nothing about ignorance that does that.  There is nothing about comprehensive, medically accurate sexual education which precludes that. But it is time and past time that we promote the religious views in schools regarding abstinence. 

Criticism of abstinence-only sex education by the scientific and medical communities
Abstinence-only education has been criticized in official statements by the American Psychological Association,[16] the American Medical Association,[48] the National Association of School Psychologists,[18] the Society for Adolescent Medicine,[21] the American College Health Association,[21] the American Academy of Pediatrics,[19] and the American Public Health Association,[20] which all maintain that sex education needs to be comprehensive to be effective.
The AMA "urges schools to implement comprehensive... sexuality education programs that... include an integrated strategy for making condoms available to students and for providing both factual information and skill-building related to reproductive biology, sexual abstinence, sexual responsibility, contraceptives including condoms, alternatives in birth control, and other issues aimed at prevention of pregnancy and sexual transmission of diseases... [and] opposes the sole use of abstinence-only education..."[48]
The American Academy of Pediatrics states that "Abstinence-only programs have not demonstrated successful outcomes with regard to delayed initiation of sexual activity or use of safer sex practices... Programs that encourage abstinence as the best option for adolescents, but offer a discussion of HIV prevention and contraception as the best approach for adolescents who are sexually active, have been shown to delay the initiation of sexual activity and increase the proportion of sexually active adolescents who reported using birth control."[19]
On August 4, 2007, the British Medical Journal published an editorial concluding that there is "no evidence" that abstinence-only sex education programs "reduce risky sexual behaviours, incidence of sexually transmitted infections, or pregnancy" in "high income countries".[49]

A comprehensive review of 115 program evaluations published in November 2007 by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found that two-thirds of sex education programs focusing on both abstinence and contraception had a positive effect on teen sexual behavior. The same study found no strong evidence that abstinence-only programs delayed the initiation of sex, hastened the return to abstinence, or reduced the number of sexual partners.[50][51] According to the study authorJoycelyn Elders, former Surgeon General of the United States, is a notable critic of abstinence-only sex education. She was among the interviewees Penn & Teller included in their Bullshit! episode on the subject.[52]

:"Even though there does not exist strong evidence that any particular abstinence program is effective at delaying sex or reducing sexual behavior, one should not conclude that all abstinence programs are ineffective. After all, programs are diverse, fewer than 10 rigorous studies of these programs have been carried out, and studies of two programs have provided modestly encouraging results. In sum, studies of abstinence programs have not produced sufficient evidence to justify their widespread dissemination."

Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that abstinence-only sex education leads to the opposite of the intended results by spreading ignorance regarding sexually transmitted diseases and the proper use of contraceptives to prevent both infections and pregnancy.[53]
In July 2009, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released their analysis of national data collected between 2002 and 2007. Their findings included:[54]
“ This report identifies a number of concerns regarding the sexual and reproductive health of our nation's young people... It is disheartening that after years of improvement with respect to teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, we now see signs that progress is stalling and many of these trends are going in the wrong direction ”

— Janet Collins, director of the CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, July 17

Birth rates among U.S. teens had increased in 2006 and 2007, following large declines from 1991 to 2005.

About one-third of adolescents had not received instructions on methods of birth control before age 18.

In 2004, there were about 745,000 pregnancies among females younger than 20, including an estimated 16,000 pregnancies among girls between 10 and 14.

In 2006, about one million young people aged 10 to 24 were reported to have chlamydia, gonorrhea, or syphilis. Nearly one-quarter of females aged 15 to 19, and 45% of females aged 20 to 24, had a human papillomavirus infection during 2003 and 2004.

In 2006, the majority of new diagnoses of HIV infection among young people occurred among males and those aged 20 to 24.

From 2004 to 2006, about 100,000 females aged 10 to 24 visited a hospital emergency department for nonfatal sexual assault, including 30,000 females aged 10 to 14.

Hispanic teens aged 15 to 19 are much more likely to become pregnant (132.8 births per 1,000 females) than non-Hispanic blacks (128 per 1,000) and non-Hispanic whites (45.2 per 1,000)

Non-Hispanic black youth in all age groups have the highest rates of new HIV and AIDS diagnoses.

We need to take back this country from the bad decisions, the failed philosophy, of conservatives, of religious right extremists, who make culture war on women, on education, on science.  We cannot allow people who believe that ignorance is a good idea for our schools because of their faith choices to prevail.  If we do not succeed in removing these people from control of curricula and from control of funding, we will become backward, we will return to dark ages of millenia past.  These people are wrong and they are harmful.  Even the more sane among their own, like this governor in Utah, are beginning to recognize the perils of their extremism."Herbert Vetoes Abstinence"

By GoJo Staff on March 17, 2012

Utah Governor Gary Herbert(R) has vetoed a bill that would have severely restricted sex education in public schools.
The bill would have required educators to teach abstinence only and would forbid instruction on contraception and other matters related to human sexuality.
Herbert said the bill went too far and denied parents the right to choose how their children receive information about sex. Herbert was praised by Democrats for vetoing the legislation, but criticized for doing it after hours, on a Friday night.

Abstinence is a choice, based on a belief one decides to embrace.  Each of us is free to make a different choice, to embrace a different belief.  That choice should not be made for other people by the religious right.  We are not a theocracy, they should not be emulating the Taliban.This is the religious right, this time in Utah, demonstrating again how they wish to be the American equivalent of the Taliban.  The Taliban destroys schools, keeps girls and women ignorant to control them, and restricts education to religious approved education for boys.  Like the Taliban, the religious right wants to control people by keeping them stupid, by denying them education and by impairing their ability to decide their lives for themselves. This is a narrow slice of that same pie in Utah.  Hoorah! for the governor for sending that back to them on a plate.

Ignorance About Sex Is Not Limited to Right Wing Culture Wars

World Contraception Day was September 26, 2011 this year.  Organizations, like USAID, provide contraceptive assistance and education to 54 developing countries, under direction from the State Department. 

Unfortunately, we don't do as well for our own citizens.

The rate of increase in unsafe sex is  among the worst in the United States, of the countries listed in this article.  This can be linked to abstinence-only sex ed funding, like the insertion of funding for failed abstinence only sex ed in 'Obamacare':

The bill restores $250 million over five years for states to sponsor programs aimed at preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases by focusing exclusively on encouraging children and adolescents to avoid sex. The funding provides at least a partial reprieve for the approach, which faced losing all federal support under President Obama's first two budgets.
"We're very happy to see that funding will continue so the important sexual health message of risk avoidance will reach American teens," said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, a Washington-based lobbying group. "What better place to see such an important health issue addressed than in the health legislation?"
But the funding was condemned by critics, who were stupefied by the eleventh-hour rescue.
"To spend a quarter-billion dollars on abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that have already been proven to fail is reckless and irresponsible," said James Wagoner of the Washington group Advocates for Youth. "When on top of that you add the fact that this puts the health and lives of young people at risk, this becomes outrageous."

No surprise, that right wingers like Presidential Candidate contender Rick Perry promotes abstinence-only sex ed as 'working' despite Texas having one of the highest rates of unintended pregnancies - and he highest  rate of  REPEAT unintended pregnancies.  It's not just a war on sex ed and accurate medical information being provided to kids and adults, in Texas, there IS an actual war on contraception :

Yet another instance where right wing ideology is not fiscally responsible, and is misogynistic.
From the Ottawa, Sun:

More young people having unsafe sex: Study


LONDON - Young people across the globe are having more unprotected sex and know less about effective contraception options, a multinational survey revealed on Monday.
The “Clueless or Clued Up: Your Right to be informed about contraception” study prepared for World Contraception Day (WCD) reports that the number of young people having unsafe sex with a new partner increased by 111% in France, 39% in the U.S. and 19% in Britain in the last three years.
“No matter where you are in the world, barriers exist which prevent teenagers from receiving trustworthy information about sex and contraception, which is probably why myths and misconceptions remain so widespread even today,” a member of the WCD task force, Denise Keller, said in a statement with the results of the study. 
“When young people have access to contraceptive information and services, they can make choices that affect every aspect of their lives which is why it’s so important that accurate and unbiased information is easily available for young people to obtain,” Keller said. 
The survey, commissioned by Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals and endorsed by 11 international non-governmental organisations, questioned more than 6,000 young people from 26 countries including Chile, Poland and China, on their attitudes towards sex and contraception.
The level of unplanned pregnancies among young people is a major global issue, campaigners say, and the rise in unprotected sex in several counties has sparked concern about the quality of sex education available to youngsters.
In Europe, only half of respondents receive sex education from school, compared to three quarters across Latin America, Asia Pacific and the USA.
Many respondents also said that they felt too embarrassed to ask a healthcare professional for contraception.
“What young people are telling us is that they are not receiving enough sex education or the wrong type of information about sex and sexuality,” spokeswoman for the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Jennifer Woodside said in a statement.
“The results show that too many young people either lack good knowledge about sexual health, do not feel empowered enough to ask for contraception or have not learned the skills to negotiate contraceptive use with their partners to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies or STIs (sexually transmitted infections),” she said.
More than a third of respondents in Egypt believe bathing or showering after sex will prevent pregnancy, and more than a quarter of those in Thailand and India believe that having intercourse during menstruation is an effective form of contraception.
But the fact that many young people engage in unprotected sex and the prevalence of harmful myths should not come as a surprise, Woodside said.
“How can young people make decisions that are right for them and protect them from unwanted pregnancy and STIs, if we do not empower them and enable them to acquire the skills they need to make those choices?” she said.

The War on Contraception and Sex Education about contraception is a dangerous and costly problem for our national Public Health policy.  According to the web site of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancies, unplanned pregnancies result in a cost of BILLIONS of dollars in direct health care costs each year.  That doesn't begin to address the indirect costs, and the related costs of STDs.

Can we AFFORD misogynistic right wing ideology and policies?

I don't think so.