ADF recruits artists in quest for anti-gay discrimination

AZCentral.com (“part of the USAToday network”), has published a propaganda piece entitled, “Phoenix artists sue rather than create art for same sex weddings.”

Brush & Nib is an upscale hand-painting, hand-lettering and calligraphy company that creates and sells customized art, including for weddings.

Brush & Nib reflects who Joanna and Breanna are and what they believe — only creating art consistent with their Christian beliefs.

And since the Bible very clearly states, “Thou Shalt Not produce hand-lettered invitations for gay couples announcing their impending wedding,” they should have a Constitutional right to discriminate against any potential clients who happen to be gay, amirite?

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Redundant “protection” bill fails in Louisiana

Oh noes! ChristianToday.com reports that Louisiana lawmakers failed to pass a law that ostensibly would have protected churches and pastors from the non-existent threat of being forced to perform gay marriages against their will. Now the only thing protecting conservative Christians in Louisiana are the First Amendment, a number of federal laws that already protect religious liberty, and a couple centuries or so of legal precedent.

Eek.

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What to ask the hate-preacher in your store

As a preliminary caveat, I think it’s only prudent to say that confrontations—especially with irrational people—have a non-trivial potential for escalating into violence, and we need to understand that and be careful to avoid it. Knowing when to shut up and let the store/security staff take over can be key.

That said, it might be fun to ask, as a mental exercise, what would be a good question to ask a hate-preacher if they happened to storm in to your local Target and begin harassing innocent shoppers?

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Different, thus dangerous

According to a report on NPR, almost a dozen states have joined together to file a lawsuit seeking to protect bigotry and privilege against an onslaught of justice and equal rights for minorities.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, says the federal government has “conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”

Yes, a “massive social experiment.” Those evil government officials, with their bubbling test tubes and unstable nuclear reactors, rubbing their rubber-gloved hands together and gleefully cackling, “Let’s take a bunch of innocent, harmless people and see what happens if we mind our own business and leave them alone, MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!”

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What “apocalypse” looks like

I was listening to Christian talk radio on the way home again, and one of the two co-hosts had an interesting story to share. It seems he and his son stopped at one of the larger gas station/convenience store combos so his son could use the bathroom, and while he was waiting outside the single-occupant mens room for his son, a man came up and said, “You waiting to use the rest room?” The dad said yes he was, whereupon the newcomer said, “Well, I guess I’m feeling like a woman today,” and entered the women’s rest room and locked the door and used it.

And that was the end of the story. No women were involved, no sexual assaults occurred, no one was injured (unless you count the tarnished pride of the guy who was so desperate he had to use the ladies room). All that happened was that a person who might otherwise have suffered an embarrassing and messy biological malfunction got to use a perfectly serviceable facility that would otherwise have gone unused.

Of course, this being Christian talk radio, the discussion thereafter was all about “how far America has fallen” and “haven’t Christians been warning us this would happen” and “isn’t it shameful that the President would get involved” and so on and so on. But I couldn’t help but think, “This is the end of America they were so worried about? A guy making a joke while taking harmless steps to avoid peeing himself?”

And they wonder why more and more people are ceasing to take Christianity seriously.

Procrustean pants

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Dan Forest has released a statement about the Obama administration’s new bathroom policy. Forest states, in part,

North Carolina will not stand by and let our locker rooms and high school showers be used for social experimentation at the expense of the privacy and protection of our young boys and girls. I do not think it is appropriate for teenage boys and girls to share the same bathroom. I don’t think it appropriate for teenage boys and girls to shower next to each other.

Which sounds almost moral until you realize that this is his argument in favor of forcing high school girls to share bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers with transgender boys.

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Bonehead NC legislators make women’s restrooms more accessible to men

Once upon a time in North Carolina, if you saw a man going into a women’s restroom, you had good reasons to be suspicious, and likely call the police. But now, in a bold move whose brilliance can only be compared to Wile E. Coyote’s decision to use nitroglycerin in the fuel tank of his Rocket-Powered Road Runner Catcher, a gang of conservative legislators, with the avid assistance of the governor, has railroaded through a law requiring trans men to use the women’s facilities. (Nor is that the only serious flaw in this badly-botched attempt at persecuting a harmless minority!) You read that right: this new law requires certain men to use the ladies room.

Now, people capable of engaging in rational thought for more that one or two seconds at a time will immediately realize that trans men look no different than any other men, in most cases. By requiring trans men to use the ladies room, the idiots in the NC state government have given all men a plausible excuse for being in the ladies room. They don’t even need to pretend to be trans. And if a real cis-het rapist were to decide to take advantage of the state government’s stupidity, all he would need to do is make sure to select his targets carefully, and only invade the rest room when the woman there would be unlikely to challenge his presence until it was too late. And thanks to the NC governor and his knuckle-dragging henchmen, there is now a legitimate opportunity for him to do so.

You know what? I take back what I said. Wile E. Coyote is WAY smarter than these Stone Age “geniuses.”

Destroyed by hate

By now you’ve heard the story of Nick and Sarah Jensen, who claim that they will seek a civil divorce if same-sex marriage is allowed, even though they fully intend to continue living together as a legally-unmarried cohabiting pair. Their goal is to try and claim that gay marriage really is a tangible threat to traditional marriage. And since no such threat really exists anywhere in the real world, they’re trying to create one out of nothing.

They are failing. The law is doing nothing to force them apart. If they choose to spitefully end their own marriage, it will not be because of any act of the government’s, but solely due to their inexorable hatred towards gays.

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How God made us

She: What do you think about Caitlyn Jenner?

He: I think that’s wrong. God made each of us to be what we’re supposed to be, and we should stay the way God made us.

She: God made each of us naked. Do you think we should all stay that way?

He: …….

Caitlyn Jenner vs Tim Tebow

The “soldiers are brave” meme, as an attack on Caitlyn Jenner, pretty much flopped, so conservative evangelicals have come up with a new meme to spread the word about what a poor, persecuted majority they are.

The people applauding Bruce [sic] Jenner for “being himself” [sic] are the same people who condemned Tim Tebow and told him to “keep his beliefs to himself”. That’s what is wrong with America.

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