Artemisia has some peas.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Artemisia has some peas.
From Out Magazine.
A House committee is using the defense bill to pass “religious exemptions” for federal contractors.
Republicans in Congress are using defense funding to help pass a “religious freedom” law through Congress.
The House Armed Services Committee on Thursday approved a “religious freedom” amendment to the defense authorization bill. It would undo an executive order from President Obama that prohibits government contractors from engaging in anti-LGBT discrimination against their employees.
The amendment, introduced by Rep. Steve Russell, could be compared to the “religious freedom” laws that caused outrage in Indiana, Arizona, Georgia and elsewhere. In this case, it would limit the federal government to protecting only those groups now named in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the American with Disabilities act, reports the Washington Blade. Neither of those laws protect LGBT people from discrimination, therefore Russell’s amendment would allow religious organizations doing business with the U.S. government to fire or punish any employee based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Nashville, TN Assistant DA Chad Butler (screen capture)
Finally, someone talks sense.
The District Attorney of Nashville, Tennessee said Thursday that anti-trans “bathroom laws” like North Carolina’s are aimed at the wrong people. Sexual predators as a group, he said, are overwhelmingly “heterosexual men.”
WSMV Channel 4 reported on statements by assistant DA Chad Butler, who said that in his long career of prosecuting sex crimes, he has never prosecuted a single case against a transgender person.
“As long as I’ve been doing this job and the hundreds of cases I’ve reviewed, I’ve never once had a transgender person come across my desk as an offender,” he said.
Butler specializes in crimes against children, who are ostensibly the people the discriminatory laws are meant to protect. He told Channel 4 that the people parents need to be on guard against are the people they see every day.
“A majority of my cases are fathers, stepfathers, uncles, Boy Scout leaders, coaches, youth ministers, preachers,” Butler said. “People that are already close to the family that the family trusts.”
The idea that trans people are more likely to victimize children, he said, is “statistically unfounded and off base.”
Stan the T. Rex at the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum (Facebook.com)
The Bible is a literal, factual history of the world, including Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood. Dinosaurs rode the ark with Noah. People lived 10 times longer in Biblical times because the Earth’s atmosphere had more oxygen then.
These are just a few of the wrong-headed “facts” on display at The Glendive Dinosaur & Fossil Museum in Glendive, Montana, according to the Great Falls Tribune, which published an exposé on the creationist museum this week.
[…]
“Turtles can live 150 years. Take times 10. You have a 1,500-year-old turtle. All these things are going to be amazing when things live 10 times longer,” he said. […]
The museum’s star attraction is its skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, nicknamed Stan.
“Evolutionists look at Stan and say he’s 45 years old (when he died),” Kline said. “I look at Stan and say maybe 450 years old. That could account for the size of Stan.”
Their longer lifespans and increased oxygen intake, Kline maintains, allowed people and animals to grow to immense size.
[…]
“We’re cutting edge here,” Canen insisted. Scientists and academics who don’t believe the Bible, he said, are lazy thinkers who can’t let go of their old ideas.
“They hold onto (the idea) so long they don’t allow anything to question it,” he said. “If you can trust any historical document, you can trust the Bible.”
There isn’t enough facepalm. People who don’t believe the bible are lazy thinkers who can’t let go of old ideas? <much sputtering> How, just how can anyone say that with a straight face and mean it? That just takes willful ignorance to a new level.
This does remind me of my favourite Kent Hovind quote, because dinosaurs being vegetarian is brought up in these articles as well:
In spite of their ferocious look, many people would probably argue the T-Rex was a vegetarian. The ferocious teeth would have been great for, you know, crushing stuffed pumpkins or something, you know. I don’t know if it has ever been proven they were meat eaters. There is plenty of evidence from cracks in the enamel with chlorophyll stains in them indicating they were certainly eating plants.
Nick Sherman, Ghost Town. You can read more about Nick here.
Simon Lynge (Scandanavian Inuit), Love Comes Back. You can read more about Simon here.
Sihasin, Take A Stand. This is Jeneda and Clayson (Navajo), founding members of Blackfire. You can read more about Sihasin here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj57V7rsza0
The children at BiZoHa, an orphanage and school in southwest Uganda, wake up at 7 a.m. Within an hour they’re ready and dressed in their school uniforms, blue shirts with bright yellow collars and either charcoal grey pants or dresses. There are classes after that and, at 10:30, a pause for porridge, bread, and fried bananas. The day continues from there — classes, meals, play, and sleep — perfectly routine and peaceable. But in the Kasese District, a multi-ethnic region on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo, this schedule, with all its reassuring regularity, is radical. There are no prayer breaks. There are no church services. BiZoHa, described by its backers as “the world’s first atheist orphanage,” is a humanist raft adrift a choppy sea of faith.
[…]
In 2009 he formed the Kasese United Humanist Association, which in turn led to formation of the Kasese Humanist Primary School. The school is really two schools located on different campuses — one, the Rukoki Campus, in Kyondo, and the other, BiZoHa, in Muhokya. Unlike Rukoki, BiZoHa works in conjunction with an orphanage.
“I’m so concerned with how there is massive indoctrination and dogmatism and a brainwashing of the minds of children in orphanages,” says Musubaho. “My goal here is offer an alternative, so that when these children grow up they are in the position to think freely, to be critical of everything. One of the reasons I was motivated to open this orphanage was to send a message to the people of Muhokya and the world that we people of non-belief also care about the well being of others, especially children.”
Kate and Linda Rohr sit down for breakfast on Valentine’s Day at their home in Fort Bragg, Calif. Later that week, Kate would have her gender-affirmation surgery. (Amy Ellis Nutt / Washington Post)
For months, Bill Rohr kept three clocks running on his iPad. One counted down the days to his retirement as a surgeon: Dec. 31, 2015. Another counted up the days since he and his wife, Linda, married: June 15, 1968.
The third clock, the most recent addition and the one that most occupied Rohr’s thoughts, showed the days until his Feb. 17, 2016, surgery at Mills-Peninsula Medical Center south of San Francisco.
At age 70, Bill would become Kate.
It was an operation he’d long ago dismissed as unattainable – but one Linda said he deserved to have. She’d traveled the arc of his life, supportive even after his bombshell confession.
Hailing from Uganda, one of the most homophobic places on Earth, Cleo shares her story of love and triumph in the new documentary, The Pearl of Africa.
Cleopatra Kambugu refuses to be a victim. She refuses to be silenced, or made afraid. She simply wants to be free to live her life and love her man. It’s a universal feeling, this wanting, needing to be free, but in a place like Uganda, and for a woman like Cleo, freedom is hard fought.
As one of the few openly trans women in Uganda, and in all of Africa, Cleo faces any number of challenges to freedom, but she’s luckier than most. She was able to travel to Thailand for her gender confirmation surgery, though her native Uganda does not recognize her as female. That comes with its own set of problems, particularly when traveling, or trying to secure healthcare.
Hoping to shed light on a nearly invisible population within a country shrouded in homophobic myths and realities, Cleo began sharing her story in the popular webseriesThe Pearl of Africa. Now a documentary, Cleo’s story has the ability to reach an even wider audience.
There just aren’t enough new board games commemorating hits movies from the 1980s. In an effort to help rectify that situation, a company called River Horse has partnered up with The Jim Henson Company to create a Labyrinth board game, based on the 1986 fantasy film starring the late David Bowie and a young Jennifer Connelly.
The Labyrinth board game is scheduled to get released this summer and features some pretty impressive sculpts for the five collectible game pieces that players will use to navigate the board. Get more details on the Labyrinth board game after the jump.
Here’s some photos from the Labyrinth board game from its official Facebook page:
David Bowie will be on our screens again very soon and in a role we all love. To celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Jim Henson’s scary-weird fairy tale movie Labyrinth (and the fact that I feel older than most dirt), Fathom Events is bringing the beloved nightmare-fueler back to cinemas this fall. USA Today is reporting that fans will be able to attend screenings of the movie from September 11 and 14, 2016, in select theaters nationwide ahead of the September 20 release of the 30th Anniversary special edition Blu-ray.
YES! Full Story Here.
From Lofty, who says: A couple of pics of the bottom 10ft of the Manna Gum behind the house. The old bark detaches in great crinkly sheets every year and leaves behind a mottled surface with tiny defects.
Gorgeous trees, and that wood! There’s some fabulous insect engraving there. Oh, that would make an extraordinary walking stick. (I have more than enough of those, all hand made, but still…jealous.) Thanks, Lofty! Click for full size.
Photos © Lofty. All rights reserved.
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.
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.