The home of my alma mater makes Livability.com’s list of the 100 best small towns in America. YAY! Houghton.
Sure enough, the North Carolina Senate has overridden Governor McCrory’s veto of a bill which would allow magistrates to refuse to administer same-sex marriages.
The North Carolina Senate voted Monday night to override Gov. Pat McCrory’s veto of legislation that would allow magistrates to opt out of performing wedding ceremonies.
After the 32-16 Senate vote, the bill is now in the hands of the state House, where the margin is expected to be tighter. Three-fifths of those present in each chamber are required to vote yes for a bill in order to pass a measure over the governor’s objections.
I’m guessing it will pass the House.
This should be a no-brainer: If you work for the state, you uphold the law; if you can’t, you resign.
Just as the past few years have been preoccupied with a reprise of the lunch-counter cases, what is now afoot is a reprise of the ‘massive resistance’ that followed the school integration cases. Seriously: These yahoos never learn.
Michael Hamar points toward yet another study which affirms that porn usage is most intense amongst the Godly.
Religious conservatives in the Bible Belt search for online porn more than anyone else according to a new study published earlier this month.
The new study, published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior and produced by researchers from Canadian Universities, found that American states with more religious conservatives search more for sexual content on Google.
No surprise there.
Something called Puritan Publications of Tennessee has just published a storybook for people who want to teach their children, aged 5- to 9-years, to fear hell.
Clearly, this is imagery adapted from Jonathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. In anticipation of those who object that subjecting a child to such terrifying imagery is inappropriate, the author appends a brief apologetic:
Some parents may be thinking that this kind of exhortation to children will give little ones horrible nightmares… It would be better for them to have nightmares now while you teach them about the realities of hell… than to wind up in the reality of the nightmare that is hell. To the Christian parent of young children, I plead with you to… teach your children about hell and the power of God’s wrath. Teach them that Christ is their only hope… Teach them that they are locked in a spiritual cage and that it dangles over the fires of hell.
A number of thoughts come to mind. In no particular order:
Revolting though it is, these teachings are well within the blister-packed, straight-off-the-shelf ambit of America’s semi-official cult — Christianity. Though any decent-minded adult should gag at the idea of this sewage being stuffed into childrens’ minds, it undoubtedly is protected by the First Amendment.
I dislike characterizing these teachings as ‘abuse.’ These parents are actively doing what they sincerely believe is best for their children, and they are not neglectful; they are stupid, if not mentally ill.
Here in North Carolina, where the godly take seriously their Jesus-duty to make certain that their children aren’t soiled by ‘the world,’ it is not at all unusual to encounter people who homeschool and will not allow their children any association with anybody who isn’t a member of their cult; there is no herd immunity against this ignorance.
Following several widely-publicized, and public, murders of skeptical writers, the Center for Inquiry is spearheading an effort to help them escape to the West.
We’ve been working secretly on rescuing our own Taslima Nasrin from a hit list in her own county and have now gotten her to safety at some continuing expense that we could really use your help with. We would also like to save several other atheist bloggers on the same death list. [ … ]
We must take these threats very seriously. Three writers have been viciously murdered in three months, with the last death, that of Ananta Bijoy Das, occurring just a couple of weeks ago.
