Atheists, Homosexuals, and Transgender Individuals, oh my!

Alabama’s anti-gay state Supreme Court judge blamed “atheists, homosexuals and transgender individuals” for his legal troubles during a Wednesday press conference, AL.com reports.

“We’re in a serious time in our country. We are at a time in our country when people who just a few years ago would have been ascribed a mental illness, a mental disorder,” he said. “When I started in 2013, if that would have happened then, this person and the people around her… would have been said to have a mental disorder… Today that person is violating and has violated a court order and is now bringing complaints against the chief justice.

Shortly after the Supreme Court’s June ruling, Moore declared the high court doesn’t have the authority to define marriage because of beliefs that God created marriage. He said in July that he believed same-sex marriage was legalized by people being influenced by Satan.

Moore is being represented by Mat Staver, a religious activist attorney from the Liberty Council, which also represented the anti-gay Kentucky clerk, Kim Davis.

For every person who is found to be saying “why, back in my time” or “call me old-fashioned” or similar – do the world a favour, retire. Go someplace quiet, and leave the rest of us to move on.

Raw Story has this here.

Unconscious? Passed Out? It’s not rape.

Shutterstock

Shutterstock

At a time when many states are busily showing how backwards, stupid, and hateful they can be, in steps Oklahoma for a bit of the idiot stakes limelight: Oklahoma court rules it’s not rape if you’re unconscious and being sodomized. From Fusion:

In a court ruling one prosecutor is calling “insane,” Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled late last month that state forcible sodomy laws do not apply if the victim is intoxicated or unconscious.

On March 24, the Oklahoma Watch (OW) reports, the court found that because the state’s sodomy law does not explicitly contain language about victims being intoxicated or unconscious, “forcible sodomy cannot occur where a victim is so intoxicated as to be completely unconscious at the time of the sexual act of oral copulation.”

“We will not, in order to justify prosecution of a person for an offense, enlarge a statute beyond the fair meaning of its language,” the appeals court wrote.

Raw Story has also covered this story:

An Oklahoma court has stunned local prosecutors with a declaration that state law doesn’t criminalize oral sex with a victim who is completely unconscious.

The ruling, a unanimous decision by the state’s criminal appeals court, is sparking outrage among critics who say the judicial system was engaged in victim-blaming and buying outdated notions about rape.

But legal experts and victims’ advocates said they viewed the ruling as a sign of something larger: the troubling gaps that still exist between the nation’s patchwork of laws and evolving ideas about rape and consent.

To say I am speechless (or textless) would be an understatement.

Peeing at Target: Go to Jail!

The Target store in Oxford, Alabama.

The Target store in Oxford, Alabama.

This Alabama City Will Now Put Transgender People In Jail For Peeing At Target.

On Tuesday night, the City Council of Oxford, Alabama unanimously approved a new ordinance that will punish individuals for using restrooms that do not match their biological sex as stated on their birth certificate. The policy is a direct response to Target indicating that trans people are welcome and will be respected in their stores.

According to the text of the ordinance, “citizens have a right to quite [sic] solicitude [sic] and to be secure from embarrassment and unwanted intrusion into their privacy while utilizing multiple occupancy bathroom or changing facilities by members of the opposite biological sex.”

Again, how are they going to know? Does everyone have to expose themselves before they are allowed into a lav? If a muscle-y bearded guy goes into the men’s lav, who is going to be having the panic attack and report him for peeing unlawfully? If a woman is in the women’s lav, well…what’s going to happen?

It also warns that “single sex public facilities are places of increased venerability [sic] and present the potential for crimes against individuals utilizing those facilities which may include, but not limited to, voyeurism, exhibitionism, molestation, and assault and battery.”

Anywhere within the city’s police jurisdiction, it is now a criminal offense for transgender people to use restrooms that match their gender identity unless they have undergone surgery and successfully changed the gender marker on their birth certificate.

Each individual violation will result in a $500 fine or up to six months in jail. CNN reported this week that “most people urinate four to seven times during a day.”

[…]

In a prepared statement after the ordinance’s passage, Council President Steven Waits said that the council passed it “not out of concerns for the 0.3 percent of the population who identify as transgender,” but “to protect our women and children,” according to the Anniston Star. Apparently many residents had complained about Target’s policy statement about transgender inclusion.

Yes, you just want to protect your [white] women and [white] children from the new bogeyman, because what would you do without one? I note that trans women and trans* children are not included under this so-called protection.

Zack Ford has the Story.

In other news, that dyed-in-the-wool idiot McCrory now claims that LGBT Backlash Is Plot to Remove Him From Office.

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory believes the backlash to House Bill 2, the controversial legislation that forces trans people to use public restrooms that do not correspond with their gender identity, is a plot to remove him from office.

In an interview published Monday, McCrory called out the Human Rights Campaign and state Democrats, who he argues are using the bill to push him out. “You’ve got to be politically naïve if you think this is not coordinated by a very effective — a very effective — group,” McCrory told The New York Times.

Full Story Here.

Bonus video:

Youtube link.

Dartboard Jesus Update

Rutgers

Remember Dartboard Jesus? Well those wailing “persecution!” won, naturally. Does it ever go any differently? The reasoning for removing it are transparently specious, to say the least.

The artwork was removed from the library on April 21 by campus officials following the slew of complaints.

“The artwork in question was removed from the exhibit because it did not meet Rutgers University Libraries policy, which requires art exhibitions and their pieces to be based on university events, curricular offerings and topics of interest to the university community,” Jessica Pellien, director of communications at Rutgers University Libraries, told NJ.com.

The dartboard was not the only questionable piece of art up for display in the Rutgers Art Library.

Other pieces included a condom-covered stack of coins and a milk carton featuring Anne Frank titled “Cute Kids Make Good Advertising,” NJ.com reported.

No names are attached to the art pieces and University officials did not out the artist.

So, no one is going to feel persecuted over the tower of babel? (That’s the title of the condom covered stack of coins.) For as much as the grotesque imagery of a [temporarily] dead guy onna stick looms large in all things Catholic, you’d think a dead guy on a dartboard wouldn’t be so bothersome. It’s still their dead guy, right? How easily is faith shaken. Tsk.

The full article is here.

Of course, an idiot from Fox just had to spill with pompous persecution puffery:

I’ve often wondered why the artistic class seems compelled to denigrate and desecrate the Sacred.

Remember the exhibit that featured the Mother Mary smeared in elephant dung? Or what about the crucifix submerged in a bottle of urine?

And yet, the God of the Islamic Radicals is off limits. It’s as if there is some sort of unwritten rule – thou shalt not profane the prophet.

I suspect the fear of a fatwa plays a significant role in their editorial process. And I can understand that.

Nobody wants to be blown to smithereens – event an idealistic, starving artist.

But I have another theory.

Maybe, just maybe American artists give the God of the Islamic Radicals a pass out of mutual respect. The enemy of my enemy…

One wages jihad with a sword. The other wages jihad with a paint brush.

A person gets the idea that Todd Starnes doesn’t pay much attention to what artists do at all. In fairness, paying attention to what artists (and people in general) do, including all the artistic commentary on Mohammed would be work. And it would require a working brain. The brainless commentary is here. Now I feel like I should dip my computer in bleach.

Wolf Saga

Walls.

Walls is a story of a strong Woman raising a young boy, and how he learns through her that we all need to have equal opportunity.

I wrote this song about my 88 year old grandmother who still has an effective impact on me. Thanks for raising me right. – Johnny Saga.

 

Stolen.

Published on Dec 8, 2015

Today Ottawa announced it’s inquiry into MMIW in Canada. [MMIW – Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women]
This is a song I wrote for the short film of the same name, directed by Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs. Which is being submitted to film festivals in the new year.

Please read up on this issue and share the song.
Miigwetch.

Tiospaye and Indigenous Environmentalism

First up, Thunder Valley CDC, working to build a community at Pine Ridge rez, one that fulfills the concept of community and tiospaye, which means extended family. This is a very important project, and one dear to my heart. If you can be tiospaye by helping out, there aren’t words enough for appreciation.

Tiospaye

 

Thunder Valley CDC – explore, read, and if you can help, pilamayaye.

Iearth

Indigenous Environmental Network. IEN is an alliance of Indigenous Peoples whose mission is to protect the sacredness of Earth Mother from contamination & exploitation, maintaining and respecting Indigenous teachings and natural laws.  Have a look around, and get involved if you can.

NoRedd

Global Alliance Against REDD.

NoRedd1

Have a look around, read, get involved if you can.

It’s all about tiospaye – we are all extended family, and it’s past time we act like it.

Cyclin’

Beautiful photos from Lofty. I’d love to be out on a bike if I was there, too. Click for full size.

pine-forest-lunch

Rattei-Rd

Twisty-and-straight

Beetaloo-valley-lunch-stop

Photos © Lofty. All rights reserved.

I’m a cyclist who loves the variety of the Australian bush, and sometimes I remember to take along my old Sony Cybershot. Sometimes I ride alone, sometimes with a group of mature aged reprobates like me. The first picture is of a pine forest lunch stop, just a rotted stump for furniture and the gentle sighing of light breezes in the tree tops for company.

The second is of a road sign that may indicate where your antipodean spirit hides.

The third is a juxtaposition between native and introduced forests of the region. The pine trees are “Pinus Radiata” or Monterey Pine, picked 120 years ago for great swathes of monoculture crops of building timber in the wetter areas of the state.

The last picture is of my cycling gang resting against a pipe line in the curiously named Beetaloo Valley, in the Flinders Ranges.