Archive for creationism

Another Upchuckable Week: The place where religion meets your rights

separation of church and state 2

Please welcome back guest blogger K.C. Boyd. You might remember her from her earlier posts. We’re only posting part of this one, but you can link over to read the rest here.

Another Upchuckable Week - the place where religion meets your rights – by K. C. Boyd

The Weekly Upchuck

Church:

  • A Day in the Life of the Family Values Gang Upchuck: Ohio youth pastor accused of sex with teen
 in church-owned house. ow.ly/kEGMK
  • Seditious Upchuck: Right wing propaganda machine incites an ignorant public. ow.ly/kIhxK
  • Taliban-like Upchuck: Houston mega-pastor teaches his manly men how to get the most out of their biblically obedient women. ow.ly/kIhD8

Education

  • Taliban-like Upchuckable Redux: Women, we’ll teach you who’s boss. http://bit.ly/147Q34j
  • Dominionism Meets Corporatism Meets ALEC Upchuck: Yikes. This is big . . . this is scary. Read please. http://bit.ly/15wFJaT
  • Education Is Highly Overrated Upchuck: T-Rex Ted (Cruz) Sets His Sites on education. http://bit.ly/16zBcDK

Islamaphobia

  • Klan-like Upchuck: Greeting card turns “Muslim” doll into a “Terrorist.” http://bit.ly/Ytz2mF
  • The Tie That Binds Upchuck: Islamophobia is one of the few things left to unify the GOP. http://bit.ly/11pKRMv

Military

Politics

  • God Luvs Guns Upchuck: Santorum loves him some NRA. http://bit.ly/18iLO9o
  • Jeezus Saves Upchuck: As one of Jesus’ legitimate “Chosen,” Mark Sanford is risen. http://bit.ly/190kmuI
  • Prime(ary)-Time Upchuck: The National Organization for Marriage declares it’s a no-go for Portman in ’16. http://bit.ly/10GB2lR

Same Sex Marriage

  • Sodom Meets Gomorrah Upchuck: Homosexual activists go after the “low hanging fruit,” no pun on their part intended. http://bit.ly/16nPPdE

 States

  • Ten-Gallon Upchuck: BSA Texas Council votes to continue ban on gay members. Rick-the-Perry stands with them. http://bit.ly/10GB2lR

Novelist K.C. Boyd is the author of Being Christian: A Novel, a steamy, pulp-fiction of a read.According to Mikey Weinstein, President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, “Boyd created a story so riveting that not only could I not put it down, but upon finishing it, I found myself, like an addict, craving more.

More at the link.

Another Upchuckable Week: The place where religion meets your rights

separation of church and state smaller

Please welcome back guest blogger K.C. Boyd. You might remember her from her earlier posts. This one is longer than her others, so we’re only posting part of it. You can link over to read the rest here.

Another Upchuckable Week - the place where religion meets your rights – by K. C. Boyd

With the 2012 election a dim memory and it’s crazy-making religion soaked primaries even dimmer, you’d be well advised to keep an eye on the states because that’s where it’s happening when it comes to Christian Crazies. For a brief sampling, take a read:

Here

  • Proving there’s still a little ‘Year of the Bible’ in all of us, last month the Pennsylvania House of Representatives declared the fast-approaching April 30 as “National Fast Day.” http://bit.ly/108RbBq

There

& Everywhere

  • Conservatives target political funding, investing where it gets the biggest political bang: in statehouses. Take a look here to learn about state funding efforts : http://bit.ly/17BbL2Ls

The “State” of Education

  • A Central Mississippi high school allegedly forced students to watch a Christian video and listen to church officials preach about Jesus Christ. http://bit.ly/11WzIMN
  • In Tennessee: The Blue Ridge Christian Academy Gave Fourth Graders the Creationism Test Heard Around the Internet. http://bit.ly/158eumJ
  • In New York, the Godly wonder: Can the Bible Save Minority Students From NYC’s Failing Public Education System? http://bit.ly/12tlgyG
  • HB 1017, which sailed through the Arkansas House of Representatives, would require the state board of education to approve public school courses that teach the Bible. Similar measures were introduced in North Carolina and Wyoming. http://bit.ly/18sAMfa
  • Virginia politicians tried a different tactic: a state constitutional amendment mandating that citizens as well as elected officials and state employees have the right to pray on government premises and public property. http://bit.ly/18sAMfa
  • Pennsylvania must have some pretty dumb pencils because: 20 percent of its high school science teachers say they believe in creationism. Zowie.Zounds. Egad. http://bit.ly/166pZdL
  • Mississippi, (Yet again. – do I detect a pattern – er, a takeover?) opens the door to student-led prayer. The state makes schools develop policies giving opportunity to pray/preach at official school events. http://bit.ly/18sAMfa
  • In the hang-loose, shake your bootie state of Hawaii; Governor Neil Abercrombie (alas, he’s a Dem) proposed amending the state constitution to allow for public funding of religious pre-schools. http://bit.ly/108Smkv
  • Alaska legislators have proposed amending the state constitution to allow for tax aid to religious schools. http://bit.ly/108Smkv
  • Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled that school districts and cities are in violation of the State Constitution for offering health insurance benefits to the domestic partners of their employees.. http://bit.ly/16qIs51
  • A new Alabama tax-credit law that subsidizes tuition at private schools will likely end up helping academies founded to get around racial desegregation of public schools. http://bit.ly/108Smkv
  • Down in the bayou, a Louisiana voucher plan subsidizes religion: http://bit.ly/108Smkv

Speaking of Louisiana, Here’s an Extra Bit of Educational Lagniappe

  • Despite a half century Of Supreme Court Rulings, states still look for ways to sneak prayer Into Public Schools. http://bit.ly/18sAMfa
  • The eight most conservative senators join fight against common core education standards. http://bit.ly/12Jg9up

It’s on to the 2014 Election Upchuckables aka, How To Insure Religion Remains On the Ballot

  • The American Renewal Project, whatever the frick that means, plans to target twelve key swing states in the mid-terms. Reminiscent of Ohio’s ’06 dance with the “Patriot Pastors,” they plan to organize pastor briefings and voter registration drives in an attempt to restore the U. S. to its Judeo-Christian roots. http://yhoo.it/YwDsGE
  • Mat Staver’s Liberty Counsel, an affiliate of Jerry Falwell  Liberty University, announced that it is gearing up to mobilize pastors who share the belief “that America was established as a Christian nation, and the guardians of those Biblical principles has always been His church.” http://bit.ly/17BcYal

Military Issues Provide for Deadly Serious Upchucks (thanks goes to Mikey Weinstein and his Military Religious Freedom Foundation)

Novelist K.C. Boyd is the author of Being Christian: A Novel. According to Mikey Weinstein, President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, “Boyd created a story so riveting that not only could I not put it down, but upon finishing it, I found myself, like an addict, craving more.

“A Week of Upchucks: Keep on recruiting for bad guys while you root to undermine education, science, equal rights”

gop fail 3Please welcome back guest blogger K.C. Boyd. You might remember her from her earlier posts:

A Week of Upchucks

By K. C. Boyd

 “Pro-Life” Upchucking

  • Add Ohio’s to the ever-growing list of states whose House voted to defund Planned Parenthood.
  • Senator Brownback signed House Bill 2253 this week. Scribbled at the top of his marked up copy of this “Pro-Life Protections Act,” were the words Jesus & Mary, with “Pro-Life” further down in the margins. Good to confirm in writing that legislators really do govern by Sharia the Bible. After North Dakota, the Kansas bill is second to define life as beginning at conception.

Beyond Upchuck: Second child of faith-healing couple dies after no medical care

  • With the death of an 8-month old baby resulting from Fundamentalist Christians putting faith over science, this is well beyond your average upchuck. When you become a parent, you are responsible for your children’s health and welfare, and that includes after the child is born. If a mother or father chooses God over medicine for themselves, that’s their choice, and their problem. But to sit by and pray while their 8-month baby struggles for days with severe diarrhea and breathing problems, such negligence is criminal (even more so, this being their second child to have died from prayerful neglect.)
  • Meanwhile, out in Oklahoma, self-proclaimed pro-lifers, more accurately described as pro-negligence once the baby is born, have decided that public education’ isn’t all that important or necessary. In line with the ‘drown-it-in-the-bathtub’ meme, Kansas’ governor and legislators have enacted public school cuts that are among nation’s highest and which, over time, may well destroy public education, as we know it. At the same time, the goodly legislators are looking for ways to cut taxes (for the rich.)

Schaudenfreude Upchuck

  • Things aren’t looking too promising for a successful GOP’ wooing of the LGBT community. Despite the spoken desire by one wing of the party to at least appear more gay-friendly, the RNC couldn’t help caving to the Rebiblicans’ that make up its base. At the RNC April meeting in Los Angeles, The GOP confirmed that they cannot and will not change their platform when it comes to gay marriage. Why schaudenfreude, you ask? Quite frankly because this upchucker loves nothing more than to see than the GOP engage in all manner of self-sabotage.

Dino Upchuck

  • Ken Ham is smiling these days thanks to a deal his Answers in Genesis’ ad agency made to screen an animated Creation Museum commercial during previews at each of the 458 theaters showing the newly released Jurassic Park 3-D movie. Not only that but these theaters will also continuously loop said commercial in their lobbies, exposing evermore young people to the Big Lie.

And finally, heading over to the land of whack job Upchucks

  • Ann Coulter exercised her right to persecute Muslims on Fox (cough) News when she stated that the Boston bombing suspect’s wife should be in prison for wearing a hijab. Talk about denying a woman’s rights – - someone needs to sew her mouth permanently shut.
  • Pat Robertson, never one to disappoint averred that “Islam is to blame for not only the Boston Marathon bombing, but terrorism around the world.” Comparing ‘Evil’ Islam To Nazism, Robertson is sure to have ruffled the feathers of many a future would-be terrorist.
  • Lastly there’s the Beckster’s continued accusations of a dreamt–up government cover-up with regards to the Marathon bombing. Informed by what can only be a super-duper top-secret source, Beck accuses the Dems of hiding “damning evidence” that a Saudi National was involved in the Boston bombing. Of course we know he’s a nutcase but something that most folks aren’t aware of is that Homeland Security Chairman Michael T. McCaul, Jeff Duncan, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, Peter King and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, Candice Miller wrote to Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano requesting an immediate classified debriefing on the Saudi whose identity is said to be hidden and who the government instantly spirited out of the country/ This can’t help but make one remember when Bush and Co. really did whisk the Bin Laden family out of the country just after 9/11, well before private or commercial planes were permitted back in the air.

I say, keep it up guys. Keep on recruiting for the bad guys while you root to undermine education, science and equal rights.

We’ll see you in 2014.

Novelist K.C. Boyd is the author of Being Christian: A Novel. According to Mikey Weinstein, President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, “Boyd created a story so riveting that not only could I not put it down, but upon finishing it, I found myself, like an addict, craving more.

Friend of #TPC La. teen science activist Zack Kopplin to be on Friday’s “Real Time with Bill Maher”

zack kopplin current 2013

My now-nineteen-year-old Louisiana pal Zack Kopplin is still fighting creationism law, and yes, Zack (@ZackKopplin and @RepealTheSEA) is one remarkable teen. Our previous posts by and about Zack here. His mission is to just say NO to creationist vouchers. Well, not just say no, he’s an activist after all.

In fact, he has now become a leader in the fight to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act, which allows creationism to be taught in public schools.

And if all that isn’t enough, he’s about to be on Real Time! He told me about this appearance a few days ago, and I nearly forgot, but that’s okay. We DVR it every week.

Here’s the press release:

Louisiana Science Activist Zack Kopplin Is a Guest on “Real Time
with Bill Maher”

Who: Bill Maher, Zack Kopplin, Sebastian Junger, Abby Huntsman, Senator Bernie Sanders, Stephen Moore

What: Zack Kopplin, a Louisiana native and Rice University sophomore who, as a high school student, launched a campaign to repeal Louisiana’s creationism law, will be interviewed as the mid-show guest and panelist on this week’s episode of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

Last year, Kopplin’s research on hundreds of creationist voucher schools generated international attention. Kopplin has been named the first-ever “Troublemaker of the Year.”

He is also a recipient of the Hugh Hefner First Amendment Award and National Center for Science Education’s Friend of Darwin Award.

His activism has been previously featured on “Moyers and Company,” “Viewpoint with John Fugelsang,” and “Hardball with Chris Matthews.” Kopplin was highlighted as a “Footsoldier” on “The Melissa Harris-Perry Show.”

Kopplin is organizing a movement calling for a Second Giant Leap for humankind, which will be achieved by increasing science funding and teaching evidence based- science.

When: Tomorrow, Friday, April 5, 2013

Where: HBO

The pastor who “promotes a generation of stupidity, all for the glory of his ego”

jesus on dinosaur

Please welcome back guest blogger and all-around cool person, K.C. Boyd. You might remember her from an earlier post, So which is it, GOP? Open contempt for marriage equality or “outreach”? “Inquiring upchuckers want to know.”

Daily Upchuck

Warning: Due to the seriousness of this post, there will be no mini-pukes today.

John Hagee, the pasty, corpulent human dinosaur that he is, has entered the amusement-church fray.  Not content to peddle the coming End Times glory over the Christian airwaves and in church on Sundays, the Cornerstone mega-pastor decided to further his market on dumbing down San Antonio’s youth.

Tiptoeing in the footsteps of the smarmy Ken Hamm, whose $27 million Northern Kentucky Creation Idiocracy “Museum” far overshadows Cornerstone’s hovel of a $5 million Noah’s Ark Children’s Building , they both spew the same errantly biblical pablum, Hagee ‘s ark opened last week to an astonishing 28,000 visitors.

In and of itself, it is unsurprising that so many people lined up for this piece of biblical theater when, after all, the latest Gallup Poll showed that 46% of Americans today believe in Creationism. (GRAND UPCHUCK) What astonishes and disturbs is that the Scopes trial did so little to eliminate the mythical thinking and teaching that continues to delude yet another generation of children nearly ninety years later. Of the ark, Matthew Hagee, the heir-in-waiting to his father’s multi-million dollar empire said, “There is no greater investment that can be made than that of building a foundation in the life of a child that will keep them the rest of their days,” Foundation, exclaims this upchucker! A foundation guaranteed to leave unsuspecting children far behind their science-believing peers, peers who have already left them so far behind in the dust that they can never hope to catch up – that kind of foundation?

Therein lies the heartbreak. It is one thing for an adult to choose religious belief over science but it is another entirely for a pastor to actively promote a generation of stupidity, all for the glory of his ego. For that is exactly what’s on show here – - an oversized, manipulative man, prideful enough to hawk his particular faith over science, intellect and knowledge and to do so to the lifelong detriment of his followers. Faith may have its place in society – that’s a topic for another day – but it has no right to compromise the future of that society’s children. 

Hamm, Hagee and the rest of the creationist charlatans must prove to their audiences that Genesis took place exactly as is written for if not, the rest of the Bible falls apart. Without Genesis as Truth, Hagee is left with parables and lessons of morality and then the whole thing, including his End Times ecstasies fall apart. No, far better than that, he chooses to delude and promise, to lie and to cheat, to steal and to rob an entire generation and beyond.

Not very Christian of him, I’d say.

Novelist K.C. Boyd is the author of Being Christian: A Novel. According to Mikey Weinstein, President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, “Boyd created a story so riveting that not only could I not put it down, but upon finishing it, I found myself, like an addict, craving more.

Bobby Jindal believes slavery was just a “choice”

gop revisionist history slaves lies

According to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, equal opportunity is so important that when it comes to their children’s education, parents need a choice! Just like slaves did back in the day! Because, see, slavery was a choice. Umwhat?

Crazy Crawfish:

[U]nder Jindal’s guidance, Louisiana is encouraging voucher schools to open up and teach that slavery was just a choice, and not an entirely bad one.

A few slave holders were undeniably cruel. Examples of slaves beaten to death were not common, neither were they unknown. The majority of slave holders treated their slaves well.”United States History for Christian Schools, 2nd ed., Bob Jones University Press

This is just one of the “facts” being taught in voucher schools supported by taxes paid by everyone. Jindal seems to believe the greater sin is to curtail choice, than it is to allow the promotion of the idea that slavery wasn’t really that big of a deal, that if not for the actions of a few slave holders that beat and mistreated their slaves, slavery was generally a good thing.

Jindal’s voucher school supporters believe that owning people, another ace of people, was actually much ado about nothing. Sure, many slaves were raped, tortured, murdered and forced to work under in the burning sun every day until they died, their children sold and traded like pieces of furniture, and adults bred like animals to produce good livestock to be enslaved or sold to others. . .  but for the most part it was a good deal and if not for a few miscreants that mistreated their slaves it might well be a great idea to employ today.

Poor slavery! Always getting dissed as if it were a bad thing! What’s a parent to do?

Easy peasy! Just send the kiddies to places that teach otherwise and tell everyone else to stop messing with all those nice, wholesome, private voucher schools that you choose to choose. Public school with those icky unionized teachers who stick to– ew!– truth and accuracy are clearly inferior to the fine educators at the let-us-count-the-ways more desirable private institutions.

So make sure our young ‘uns learn from the best (and by best he means unregulated). Tell them they should be proud of our history of humans owning other humans! Life was so much better back then! After all, slaves were only beaten and raped once in awhile, and being separated from their families and moved around like chess pieces couldn’t have been all that bad. Hey, they got room and board, didn’t they?

And don’t get me started on their freedom to teach how swell the KKK is.

How libertyish and patriotic of them to allow kids to be pro-choice haters.

Please read the entire piece here.

And while you’re at it, check out my teen pal Zack Kopplin’s relentless efforts to fight creationism lessons in schools. He’s been making a name for himself for awhile now, trying to get America to just say NO to creationist vouchers.  He’ll be appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher next Friday.

District judge: Texas school finance system violates state constitution; public schools not adequately funded

Via Philly.com

Via Philly.com

Texas school districts have endured rapid population growth and deep budget cuts; they are not adequately funded. Imagine that.

(Reuters) - Texas’ school finance system violates the state constitution, a state district judge ruled on Monday… [T]he state has not adequately funded public education or resolved inequities among districts.

Now if only something could be done about separating church from state.

In fact, my now-nineteen-year-old Louisiana pal Zack Kopplin is still fighting creationism law. Our previous posts by and about Zack here. His mission is to do away with creationist vouchers, including in Texas.

Houston Chronicle:

Now Kopplin, a history major who is taking a full course load this semester, is preparing to fight state Sen. Dan Patrick’s effort to allow school vouchers in Texas. Patrick, R-Houston, is a strong supporter of school vouchers, which would allow tax money to flow to private and religious schools.