Planned Parenthood, sex education, and LGBT inclusivity enough to get people mad

A meeting of the Omaha Public Schools board drew about 1,000 people and ended up in a screaming match that resulted in the meeting ending early. Why? It turned out that the school board was making some minor revisions to its existing sex education course (which is optional) by making it more gender inclusive and word had been spread that this new curriculum was being designed by the latest incarnation of evil, Planned Parenthood (which was a totally false rumor) and was going to be glorifying all manner of sex, and the abstinence-only crowd was up in arms.
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Westboro Baptist Church goes after meteorologists and Kim Davis

The Westboro Baptist Church needs no introduction. Their over-the-top anti-gay rhetoric and tactics are the stuff of legend and have raised their visibility far, far beyond what its tiny membership (largely consisting of one family) could reasonably expect. So much so that one wonders if the church is not practicing some kind of performance art. But they face the same problem as the extremists in the Republican party and Playboy magazine in that they have to keep raising the level of outrageousness in order to compete with the alternatives now easily available on the internet. But like the Republican party and unlike Playboy, they have not thrown in the towel. They keep persevering.
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Religious demands for special treatment get even more extreme

It looks like the publicity surrounding Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis’s claims that her private religious beliefs should allow her to disobey any law she thinks is wrong has encouraged other crazies to adopt her attitude and demand that their ‘freedom of religion’ means that their religious practices and privileges take precedence over everything else and everybody else’s rights.
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Anti-Islam protests turned out rather differently

Last Sunday was supposed to be when a ‘Global Rally for Humanity’ was to occur which sounds like a good thing but in reality was the incongruous name given to the day when protestors were supposed to fan out to mosques across the nation to protest the presence of Muslims in the US. But at least at some venues, the event did not turn out quite as the organizers planed. For one thing, in many locations no protestors turned up at all while at others, counter-protestors outnumbered the protestors. In fact, the planned protests ended up generating solidarity between Muslims and their neighbors in the communities and between protestors and counter-protestors.
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New Jersey Archbishop puts pope Francis in his place

Pope Francis may be trying to put a kinder, gentler face on the Catholic church but it is good to remember that he has not actually changed the doctrine in any way, just shifted attention away from church stances that are becoming increasingly unpopular. The Synod of Bishops is currently in session and there is clearly tension between the various factions in the church.
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Film review: Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (2015)

Last night I watched the above documentary written and directed by Alex Gibney and largely based on the book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (2013) by Lawrence Wright that I favorably reviewed here. That review provides a lot of the information that is in the film so I will not repeat it here.
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Bye, bye TC!

The Ten Commandments monument that used to be on the state capital grounds of Oklahoma and was the subject of numerous legal battles has gone. Under cover of night, workers removed the monument and took it to its new home outside the offices of a conservative public policy analysis group known as the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. The deadline given by the judge for removal was October 12.
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