David Bowie Video Banned
O, Bowie, Let us adore You.
Caucasian Jesus
ESPN Sportscaster Immediately Trashes First Out NBA Player: Jason Collins Is Not 'A Christian' | ThinkProgress
Chris Broussard is a religious bigot.
It is easy to criticise the media, and after this disastrous week , there is much to criticise. But the consequences of the casual racism launched at Chechens - and by association, all other Muslims from the former Soviet Union, who are rarely distinguished from one another by the public - are serious. By emphasising the Tsarnaevs’ ethnicity over their individual choices, and portraying that ethnicity as barbaric and violent , the media creates a false image of a people destined by their names and their ” culture of terror ” to kill. There are no people in Chechnya, only symbols. There are no Chechen-Americans, only threats.
Ethnicity is often used to justify violent behaviour. But no ethnicity is inherently violent. Even if the Tsarnaevs aligned themselves with violent Chechen movements - and as of now, there is no evidence they did - treating Chechen ethnicity as the cause of the Boston violence is irresponsible.
One hundred years ago, the violent act of one Polish-American caused a country to treat all Polish-Americans with suspicion. Now, the Poles have become “white” - which is to say they are largely safe from the accusations of treason and murderous intent that ethnic groups deemed non-white routinely face. When a Polish-American commits a crime, his ethnicity does not go on trial with him.
But this change is not a triumph for America. It is a tragedy that it happened to Poles then, and a greater tragedy that we have not learned our lesson and it happens still - to Hispanics, to Arabs, to Chechens, to any immigrant who comes here seeking refuge and finds prejudice instead.
U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and other members of Congress are sponsoring an event to celebrate the 224th anniversary of the inauguration of Washington. The event is called "Washington: A Man of Prayer."
That works only if you don’t know anything about history. The evidence simply doesn’t back up the Religious Right’s claims about our first president. Consider this material, drawn from Brooke Allen’s book Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers:
- “[Washington] paid little attention to the Sabbath or any other outward manifestation of religiosity. We have various eyewitness accounts of life at Mount Vernon which do not much feature religious observance.”
- Ona Judge Staines, who had been a slave at Mount Vernon, did not report a lot of religious activity there: “The stories of Washington’s piety and prayers, so far as she ever saw or heard while she was his slave, have no foundation. Card-playing and wine-drinking were the business at his parties, and he had more of such company Sundays than on any other day.”
- As president, Washington attended religious services regularly but more or less stopped once he was out of office. During the last three years of his life, he attended services a grand total of three times.
- Washington’s aversion to communion is well known. When he did attend services, he would routinely leave services before communion was offered.
- On his deathbed, Allen writes, Washington spurned suggestions that he receive a visit from a clergyman. Allen writes, “Washington requested no such supernatural aid in his final hours, though he was well aware he was dying. His last act on earth, in fact, was to take his own pulse, the consummate Enlightenment gesture….”
But what about that famous painting of Washington praying in the snow at Valley Forge? The painting in question was created by an artist named Arnold Friberg in 1976 to celebrate the Bicentennial.It’s based on a story about Washington being seen deep in prayer at Valley Forge that comes from one man, Isaac Potts, who is not considered reliable. In 1918, the Valley Forge Park Commission refused to erect a marker on the spot where Washington allegedly prayed because they considered the story a legend.
But Washington added “So help me, God” to the presidential oath of office! He must have been deeply devout, right?
Once again, there is no evidence that Washington ever did this. We at Americans United got so tired of hearing this story that a few years ago we asked Philander D. Chase, senior editor of the Papers of George Washington at the University of Virginia, to weigh in on the matter.
Here is what Chase said: “[N]either we at the Washington Papers nor any other historians, to our knowledge, have been able to find any eyewitness accounts saying that Washington added the words `So help me God’ to the presidential oath at his first inauguration (or at his second inauguration, for that matter). “
Chase added, “I and some other historians think that, given Washington’s notably strong commitment to adhering as closely as possible to the Constitution, it is unlikely that he would have taken it upon himself to add the words `So help me God’ to the presidential oath.”
The people who live here made this possible:
[Silton] queried the data on three types of believers: those who see God as angry, those who see God as neutral and those who see God as loving. Controlling specifically to weed out the non-believers, Silton found that a belief in a forgiving, loving God is associated with positive psychological traits, “almost protecting against psychopathology,”
But for those who think God is angry and preparing punishments for sinners, “that belief seems to be very much related to these negative symptoms,” Silton said.
“If you look at the previous research, they’ve connected it to depression and all sorts of other psychiatric disorders,” she said. “We were looking at social phobia, obsession, compulsion, paranoia and a lot of features of anxiety disorders.”
One thing Silton stressed is that her study should not be construed to have found a cause for such symptoms. “We are not looking at casual findings here,” she said. “We are looking at correlational findings. That means we’re not saying belief caused psychiatric symptoms, but we see relationships between beliefs and these psychiatric symptoms.
Marriage, not to be confused with Holy Matrimony, is a legal contract requiring a license issued by the state. As such, it is inherently unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples the right to enter into such a contract that is afforded every other consenting couple of legal age.
Wilson’s bold stance against heated political rhetoric may come as a surprise since he frequently describes progressives as the “progressive-homo-left-Christian-Bible-conservative-traditional value-hating crowd,” a “hate filled, heterophobic, christiphobic, and conservaphobic group” and “Bible hating, Christian hating, conservative knocking, vile, foul mouthed name calling, socialist hetero/Christo-haters.
These asshats wear me out. In a war of attrition, they make me kinda wish that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
