A North Carolina legislator has submitted a bill which would proscribe Plan-B contraceptive instruction in the state’s sexual-education classes, and otherwise return control of course content to local school boards.
Plan-B is now available over-the-counter.
A bill filed last week would ban North Carolina schools from teaching students about the morning-after birth control pill.
House Bill 596 also would allow school districts to design their own sex education curriculum without any review by experts in the field.
Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto II: Criticism of Morality
§267 It is an excellent thing when one can use the expressions “right” and “wrong” in a definite, narrow and “bourgeois” sense, as for instance in the sentence: “Do right and fear no one “; “Thue Recht und scheue Niemand” i.e. to do one’s duty, according to the rough scheme of life within the limit of which a community exists. Let us not think meanly of what a few thousand years of morality have inculcated upon our minds.
The Wartburg Watch has an account of a particularly foul and cultish church located in, of all place, Sterling, Virginia.
When Joe [14-years old] was excommunicated from our church it was because he was not a Christian. Calvary Temple leadership had mandated that all members of the church were to send their children to Calvary Temple School so that they would not be polluted by the public school system. As a result, whenever a child was removed from the church, they were also expelled from the school. There is a verse in Deuteronomy 21 that says if an Israelite family had a rebellious son, they were to take him to the city gates and stone him to death. Calvary Temple’s 21st century interpretation of that verse is to shun their own rebellious children. To have nothing to do with them. To treat them as dead.
It goes downhill from there.
United we stand, divided we fall. They will deny it and swear up-and-down that it isn’t so, but the natural loyalties of healthy families threaten the total ownership that cults demand — and so their teachings aim to undermine those loyalties. This is why fundamentalists, most notably the Southern Baptists, teach that your wedding vows are less important than slavish and unthinking submission to an Invisible Friend, and why other churches tell people to throw away their difficult children.
This is the point, and the evil, of the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac — and the reason Abraham’s obsequious betrayal of his son is celebrated in three different religions. I happily surrender the last word on that odious story to Christopher Hitchens:
Just so: Flee for your life from those idiot preachers who celebrate Abraham — because your life is what those sumbidgs want.
For some mysterious, unstated reason, the Eureka Springs First Methodist Church was not allowed to participate in their community’s annual Easter Parade.
First United Methodist of Eureka Springs applied to be in the parade, and was initially accepted. One week before the parade, however, they were told they were no longer welcome. Church member Suzie Bell believes it’s because of their stance on the LGBT community.
“They wanted to know what our banner was going to say, and it said “Jesus loves all. They had decided that they did not want us in the parade, and that we weren’t welcome.” Bell said.
Bell says the Methodist Church has recently become a “reconciling congregation” meaning they are publicly welcoming of the LGBT community. Bell says that is the reason they weren’t allowed in.
The parade organizing committee refused to provide a reason and refused a television station’s request for an interview, so there is nothing to do but speculate. They’re probably right, however.
This Andy Borowitz’ piece at The New Yorker reprises a point that I (and countless others, surely) have made repeatedly: The oblivious odiousness of the Evangelical Right is destroying them.
