Ontario, CA orders all schools to allow gay-straight alliances

That wonderful sound you just heard was the shrieks of Catholic groups everywhere as the Canadian province of Ontario has just ordered that every school, religious or otherwise, must allow students to form gay-straight alliance clubs if they wish:

Ontario Education Minister Laurel Broten said there would be no compromises.

“Schools need to be safe places for kids to be themselves — and for some kids, that means being able to name a club a gay-straight alliance,” Ms. Broten said. “I don’t think there’s anything radical about allowing students to name a club.”

Church sources said they were blindsided and disappointed by the announcement. Cardinal Thomas Collins, the head of the Archdiocese of Toronto, is expected to make a statement on Monday.

The change in the provincial Liberals’ new anti-bullying bill — the Accepting Schools Act — is part of a government initiative to create a “safe and accepting climate” in schools, including Catholic schools, Ms. Broten said.

It’s important to note (as the article doesn’t appear to make clear) that this government rule only applies to publicly funded schools, regardless of religious orientation. Private schools are still more than welcome (so to speak) to be as discriminatory as their bigoted administrators see fit. But it’s always amusing to see religious apologists’ hypocritical privilege exposed whenever they rail against being forced to follow the government’s non-discrimination policies while at the same time happily accepting government funds.

Now counting how long before a fresh howl of outrage from Bill Donohue lands in my inbox.

(via Joe. My. God.)

Tags: Ontario, CA • Catholicism • Catholic Church • gay-straight alliances • GSAs • schools • Laurel Broten

Another pastor calls for the extermination of LGBT people

Rev. Curtis Knapp

Yet another Hater for Jesus drops any pretense when it comes to his desire to see LGBT people exterminated:

[Seneca, Kansas’s New Hope Baptist Church pastor Curtis] Knapp went on to read from Leviticus 20: “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death.”

“They should be put to death,” Knapp declared. “‘Oh, so you’re saying we should go out and start killing them, no?’ — I’m saying the government should. They won’t, but they should.”

“You say, ‘Oh, I can’t believe you, you’re horrible. You’re a backwards neanderthal of a person.’ Is that what you’re calling scripture? Is God a neanderthal, backwards in his morality? Is it His word or not? If it’s His word, he commanded it. It’s His idea, not mine. And I’m not ashamed of it.”

“He said put them to death,” he continued. “Shall the church drag them in? No, I’m not say that. The church has not been given the power of the sort; the government has. But the government ought to [kill them]. You got a better idea? A better idea than God?”

Once again, it’s so nice (only, not so much) when leaders of Yahweh’s flock don’t shy away from revealing their true colors to the world. But yes, I certainly do have a better idea than that horrible little sky-tyrant; it’s called secular humanism … or at the very least, not revealing yourself as a brazen bigot whose Bible-fueled hatred is exactly the sort of thing that’s driving the rapidly growing exodus from the church.

Oh, wait – that’s a good thing.

(via Joe. My. God.)

Tags: Curtis Knapp • New Hope Baptist Church • Leviticus 20 • Bible • God • government • gays • homophobia • homophobes • bigots

Bigots’ fears about gay marriage apocalypse debunked (yet again)

Slate takes a look at the facts surrounding the LGBT marriage equality debate and points out the obvious: U.S. states that have legalized same-sex marriage aren’t crumbling into oblivion, nor are they host to any more drug-fueled gay orgies than before (as far as we know, anyway). The article starts with overall marriage rates:

Start with Massachusetts, which endorsed gay marriage in May 2004. That year, the state saw a 16 percent increase in marriage. The reason is, obviously, that gay couples who had been waiting for years to get married were finally able to tie the knot. In the years that followed, the marriage rate normalized but remained higher than it was in the years preceding the legalization. So all in all, there’s no reason to worry that gay marriage is destroying marriage in Massachusetts.

The other four states that have legalized gay marriage—New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, and New Hampshire—have done it more recently, somewhere between 2008 and 2011. But from the little data we have, it looks as if the pattern will be more or less the same—a temporary jump in marriage followed by a return to virtually the same marriage rates as before gay marriage became legal. Washington, D.C., which started accepting same-sex marriages in March 2010, saw a huge 61.7 percent increase in marriage that year, though it’s too soon to see where it will settle. Again, no signs of the coming apocalypse.

Another shocker: Straight couples in those same states aren’t seeing their heteronormative unions magically dissolved, either:

Another measure of the health of marriage is a state’s divorce rate. Have those changed since gay marriage was introduced? Not really. In each of the five states, divorce rates following legalization have been lower on average than the years preceding it, even as the national divorce rate grew. In 2010, four of the five states had a divorce rate that was lower than both the national divorce rate and the divorce rate of the average state.

Of course, no amount of real evidence will ever dissuade anyone of the idea that allowing gays and lesbians to marry won’t somehow contaminate or weaken heterosexual unions (much less society as a whole) if they’re stupid or delusional enough to believe that in the first place. But there’s always hope for more reasonable individuals and fence-sitters to see reality for what it is and come down on the rational side of the issue.

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Tags: gay marriage • same-sex marriage • marriage equality • conservatives • bigots • homophobia • Massachusetts • New York • Connecticut • Iowa • Vermont • New Hampshire • divorce

How to turn away pain patients: the game

Dr. McCarthy (r) testing “drug abuse detection” videogame

As if policies regarding prescription painkillers weren’t draconian enough already, there’s a new educational videogame on the way that would purportedly teach physicians how to recognize drug abusers posing as pain patients and turn them away, presumably with no risk whatsoever of actual pain sufferers being labeled as junkies and denied their medication:

As Dr. Danielle McCarthy listens to a man beg for a prescription for painkillers, she weighs her possible responses.

A 31-year-old emergency room physician, she listens patiently as the man tells her that “every morning I wake up in pain,” describing the agony he continues to endure, three years after being injured in a car wreck.

He has tried physical therapy, acupuncture and chiropractic treatment, he says. Nothing works except pills, he insists, as his voice grows louder and more demanding.

Their exchange is similar to conversations that take place on almost every shift at Northwestern Memorial Hospital here, Dr. McCarthy said. But it is fiction — part of an interactive video game designed to train doctors to identify deceptive behavior by people likely to abuse prescription painkillers. The patient is an actor whose statements and responses are generated by the program.

The video game was designed based on research by Dr. Michael F. Fleming at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and draws on technology used by the F.B.I. to train agents in interrogation tactics. It teaches doctors to look for warning signs of drug abuse, like a history of family problems, and to observe nonverbal signs of nervousness, like breaking eye contact, fidgeting and finger-tapping.

The game, which is in its final phase of testing, is aimed at primary care and family doctors, who often feel uncomfortable and unqualified assessing their patients in this regard.

Anyone who can’t immediately identify about two hundred problems with just about every aspect of this idea is categorically unfit to debate drug policy, much less craft it. Though, to be fair, I suppose the only option left for drug warriors who wanted to make the whole situation even more ridiculous and restrictive was to literally make a game of it.

The government seriously needs to get the hell out of the relationship between doctors and their patients. The only thing resulting from threatening medical workers with harassment and prosecution for doing their jobs is more and more victims of injury and malady being denied access to medicine. Chalk it up to yet more casualties in the blindly ideological and transparently futile war on human nature itself.

(via @jacobsullum)

Tags: Danielle McCarthy • Michael Fleming • drug abuse • drug abusers • pain patients • doctors

Daily Blend: Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Pres. Barack Obama

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and “leader of the free world” ^[pictured] declares that “all military-age males in a strike zone” are “militants” and can be slaughtered with impunity. I’ve been gradually souring on the President for a long time, but this is just sick. Even Bush & Cheney were never this brazen about their bloodlust.

Ed Brayton provides some clarification – and mild reassurance – about the recent Gallup poll about abortion rights attitudes.

Some hope for Oklahoma as the state legislature shitcans three Creationist and anti-global warming education bills.
(via @BadAstronomer)

WorldNetDaily “exclusive”: Kooks declare that “miracles” in Men in Black 3 make the case for Creationism!
(via Joe. My. God.)

Great write-up about the decline and refitting of churches in Québec, Canada.

Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham to star in upcoming TV series, while Clarice Starling gets slotted on Lifetime (blech). I am perplexed.
(via Fark)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Tags: Barack Obama • Obama administration • militants • terrorists • Gallup • pro-choice • pro-choicers • pro-abortion • anti-choice • anti-choicers • anti-abortion • anti-abortionists • pro-life • pro-lifers • Oklahoma • SB 1742 • HB 1551 • HB 2341 • Men in Black 3 • Intelligent Design • Creationism • WorldNetDaily • WND • Drew Zahn • Quebec, CA • Quiet Revolution • churches • Christianity • Catholicism • Hannibal Lecter • Will Graham • Clarice Starling • Hannibal • Clarice • Lifetime • TV series

Gawker’s Nolan on punditry’s pro-military platitudes

In response to what shall henceforth be known as HeroGate, Hamilton Nolan at Gawker has penned what I’d say is the end-all be-all of write-ups concerning the transparently vacuous outrage over MSNBC’s Chris Hayes’s meek statement about how U.S. soldiers are inherently sanctified as “heroes” of unquestionable valor as a tactic for crushing any possible nuanced discussion about the role the U.S. Military is being made to play around the world. The entire thing is a must-read, but I thought these closing paragraphs were worth highlighting all on their own:

"I contribute nothing of consequence to this country, yet I reap tremendous financial benefits from it. Therefore I must pay the emptiest sort of lip service to those in the military, and childishly insult anyone who questions the kindergarten version of 'patriotism,' lest the public turn its attention to me," say the terrified, self-serving and ultimately useless pundit class of America, in a single voice.

Patriotism is not the act of mouthing platitudes about Heroes and God and Country as politicians go and start wars for money and send off young men and women to die. If the media can do anything patriotic, it is to loudly question the many varieties of bullshit that are used to pave the way for public support of wars. The 6,472 Americans who've died in Iraq and Afghanistan might have appreciated that more than being praised as "heroes" by the same members of the media that did nothing to stop them from being killed.

Isn’t it interesting how the most strident supporters of endless war and its participants are consistently those who actually have the least of importance or relevance to say about it? Or how those most eager to defend and uphold the childish deification of U.S. soldiers never falter as their government continually ships them off to get shot and blown apart overseas on an increasingly thin platter of excuses?

As has been said (least of all by me), there is certainly nothing wrong with holding a healthy respect for members of the armed forces, both for their personal sacrifices and whatever causes drive them to enlist in the first place. And it’s obvious that a great many of them truly do qualify as “heroes” under any definition. But the problem arises when this reasonable appreciation is heightened to levels of pure worship and propaganda, particularly by military cultists who make sure to stay clear from the very hardships they’re so eager to put their beloved soldiers through.

(via @ggreenwald)

Tags: U.S. Military • pundits • Chris Hayes • soldiers • Hamilton Nolan • hero-worship

This school bulletin board notice needs to spread

I can only hope this is genuine:

Some twerps just don’t learn until faced with the thought of being forced to eat their underpants.

(via Joe. My. God.)

Tags: gays • gay teens • football • schools • bullies

Doggycide in Forth Worth, Texas

Lily Girl

I think I should consider renaming this joint Doggycide Central. I only wish it weren’t so important to raise awareness about these incidents. Here’s yet another one, this time the result of a wrongful dispatch in Fort Worth:

On Saturday, dispatchers sent the officer to the 4900 block of Norma Street to investigate copper thefts. But an officer showed up at Mark and Cindy Boling's house at the 4700 block of Norma Street as they unloaded groceries outside their home.

The couple said the officer shot the dog when it came out of the garage. The officer said it lunged at him. The couple said the animal was just being friendly.

"[The officer] showed up at our house where he wasn't supposed to be and didn't care what we were saying," Cindy Boling said. "He surprised us. Our 'Lily Girl' runs up on the porch like she would anybody... and he pulls out a gun and shoots her."

Details are sparse, including whether Lily Girl survived or not. I’ll assume – ie. hope – that she did.

(via @radleybalko)

---

[full size (514×625)]

Doggycide Bingo Index

Confirmed hits:

Lily Girl presumably survived

Cop shot first

Dog was being her usual playful self

Cops show up at wrong address

Cops & owners disagree on dog’s behavior

Total: 5/25
Uncertain outcome. No bingo.

Tags: Lily Girl the border collie • Fort Worth, TX • Fort Worth Police Department • Mark Boling • Cindy Boling

In which I poke the beast of far-Right ad-hominem!

(NOTE: This post is quite long and JavaScript-heavy, so it may take a few moments to load.)

Well, well. It appears I’ve finally realized my sorta-dream of becoming a brief pseudo-celebrity on Twitter, at least in the sights of the far-Right wingnuttia. I don’t get why people complain about how difficult and painful it is to suffer the onslaught of neo-conservatism’s finest – this is awesome.

(… Okay, so perhaps I’m a tad masochistic. Bear with me.)

Firstly, some obligatory background: So today is Memorial Day, and there’s apparently quite a bit of brouhaha on Twitter over comments made by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes implying that merely enlisting in the armed forces, and even dying in battle, doesn’t inherently make one a “hero”. He took a cautious and measured approach, and I completely agree. Yes, many soldiers are undeniably heroic; no reasonable individual could say otherwise. But it’s also true that many aren’t. Soldiers are human, and thus, are prone to any vice that non-combatants may exhibit (which WikiLeaks has done an exceptional, if supremely uncomfortable, job of revealing). To treat members of the military as if they were infallible and sacred by mere virtue of their employment demeans both linguistics and reason itself, in addition to stripping the humanity from the actual heroes in the military.

Naturally, never a fan of nuanced discussion or divergent opinions, the Right immediately went into all-out manufactroversy mode, with all the usual suspects unleashing all the usual barbs against Hayes for having the sheer gall to question the sanctity of their fetishized armed forces. I won’t mention it much here; simply take the typically measured words of Ann Coulter as a template for a decent idea of the substance of the response. These children really don’t play well with others.

Kurt Schlichter

Then again, perhaps calling these people “children” is just mean to actual young’uns, as I doubt even a third-grader would pen something as puerile and idiotic as this Breitbart.com column by Kurt Schlichter, which can be adequately summarized thus: “Waugh, ‘leftist twerp’ and ‘MSNBC drone’ sounds like a ‘commie grad student’ for saying that not all members of a chosen profession I really like are automatically ‘heroes’!” (You have now been spared any need to actually click that link. You’re welcome.)

And so, as is customary whenever I come across something worth mentioning, I casually scribbled a brief response for the next Daily Blend and tweeted it, along with some supplemental thoughts:

Doggycide in Hartford, Connecticut

Fitting that I’d wake up early and groggy just to find myself reading another infuriating report of police murdering a beloved household pet because of their own screw-up:

On Dec. 20, 2006, according to the memorandum, [John] O'Hare and [Anthony] Pia walked into the Harris' backyard at 297 Enfield St. without a warrant. As they rounded the back corner of the house, they saw a St. Bernard, Seven, begin to move toward them. They turned and ran back the way they came, along the north side of the house, toward the front yard, the document states.

The [12yo] girl ran around the other side of the house "in an effort to head off Seven's path through the front yard," it states. The girl heard two shots before she got to the front yard.

When she arrived, she saw O'Hare standing over Seven, who had fallen to the ground. The dog was breathing heavily and his tail was wagging weakly, the document states. She screamed, "Don't shoot my dog."

According to the document, "O'Hare looked at K.H., then back to the dog, and shot the dog in the head." The girl ran to the dog, screaming and crying, after which O'Hare told her, "Sorry, miss, but your dog isn't going to make it," it states.

The third bullet caused the dog's death, the memorandum states. The document states that the girl had suicidal thoughts after the shooting and was hospitalized.

The suit accuses the officers of conducting an "illegal search," calling their presence a "warrantless invasion." With the exception of the driveway, the entire property is enclosed by fences or gates, and there were three "Beware of Dog" signs posted on the property, it states.

And the police’s version, complete with threatening St. Bernard:

But according to a nine-page incident report filed by police, O'Hare and Pia had received a tip from a reliable source that two handguns were stashed in an abandoned vehicle in the backyard of 297 Enfield St. They went into the yard about 3:20 p.m., and a large, full-grown St. Bernard "immediately began to bark and snarl," the report states.

Both officers ran toward the front of the house with the dog in pursuit. Pia was able to get to a sidewalk on the other side of a fence, but O'Hare ended up in the front yard "with the dog running directly at him," it states.

O'Hare was unable to elude the dog, the report states, which was "showing its teeth." He pointed his gun at it and yelled for it to get back, but the dog only hesitated momentarily before advancing again, it states.