NEWSPEAK Blog

An open letter to Citizen Link.

Dear Citizen Link,

I enjoy receiving your emails, courtesy of Focus Action, I really do. They provide me with needed breaks from my day, in the form of alternately hilarious and terrifying calls to action from the religious right, specifically the political wing of Focus on the Family. Today's is just great. You wrote:

Focus on the Family Action is calling on families to co-sign a letter urging Marriott hotels to stop offering in-room pornography. The letter, signed by 47 family groups, will be presented at a meeting May 14 between pro-family leaders and Marriott International officials.

It's the first time a major hotel chain has agreed to meet to discuss the issue.

Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy of Focus on the Family Action, said Marriott can’t continue to present itself as a family-friendly hotel chain while peddling pornography.

“Pornography is highly addictive and extremely destructive,” he said. “In the ‘secrecy’ of a hotel room, pornography can be especially dangerous because it creates a sexualized climate that puts men, women and children at risk.”

Thanks to Newspeak contributor John Dicker, we know that chain hotels like Marriott run edited versions of pornographic movies, in which—to wax crass—the cumshot is excised. But what most hotels offer up for pay-per-view is still porny enough, what with the penises and vaginas and so forth. And boobs. Don't forget those. Gross! Imagine a small child, or a baby even, seeing a boob!

But my question is: Don't you people have better things to worry about? Instead of concerning yourself with visual images of consenting adults having sex, aren't there things around the world that really and truly "put men, women and children at risk" in an actual rather than metaphorical sense? Like, say, the war? Or poverty? Or inability to obtain decent healthcare? I would say that letting a person die because he or she is uninsured or being shot at or starving to death is putting them at risk slightly more than allowing them to see a penis. Wouldn't you?

The fact is, Citizen Link/Focus Action/Focus on the Family, that we as Americans have moved ahead while you folks were courting Ashcroft and cataloguing porno movies at your local Marriott. We are sick of fundotards. We blame you for the eight years of backsliding we've endured. It's time for you to fade away. Enjoy this picture of a pair of filthy, unnatural breasts while you ponder your decreasing relevance:

Sincerely,

Aaron Retka

By popular demand ...

... Here's Benjamin Broadbent's wonderful column from the March print issue, "Christians for Choice."

In his 1966 speech accepting the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Margaret Sanger Award, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. lauded “[family] planning in our society that enriches life and guarantees the right to exist in freedom and dignity.” January 22 was the 35th anniversary of the historic Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision which made it legal for a woman to choose to have an abortion.

In the years since, the religious right has successfully convinced the American public to believe that to be religious is to be anti-choice. The fact is that a majority of Americans, including a majority of Christians, believe that reproductive decisions should be left to individuals, and that a woman should be trusted and allowed to make decisions on behalf of her own well-being.

Many who have been propagandized into the religion/choice divide would find it surprising to learn that 1,400 ministers and rabbis from across the nation helped women find safe, but not legal, abortions. The group was called the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion and was started by Rev. Howard Moody of the Judson Memorial Church in New York City in 1967.

One of the reasons this is important to citizens of Colorado in 2008 is that a ballot measure has been proposed to amend the 2nd article of the constitution of the state of Colorado to expand the definition of “person” to (quote) “include any human being from the moment of fertilization.”

I acknowledge that there are some people, many of whom are Christian, who believe this to be true. But the implication of this belief is that women should be required, regardless of the effect of a pregnancy on their personal health and well-being, and regardless of their own moral conscience, to carry every pregnancy to term because the fetus which they carry is every bit as much a “person” as they are.

The definition of the beginning of a human life is by no means established by scripture nor by science. It is still, largely, a matter of belief. In our society, differences of religious beliefs are safeguarded by the First Amendment, which guarantees religious freedom: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” To amend the Colorado constitution to define a person at fertilization is to foist a minority religious belief upon all citizens, thereby prohibiting the free exercise of religion by a majority of its citizens.

Regardless of the nuances of our beliefs on the subject of reproductive choice, Christians and other conscientious citizens must not stand for this. Among other fallacies, this effort flies in the face of the Protestant Reformation, a movement which insisted that the free conscience of individuals is paramount to what it means to be a person, free and responsible in relationship to God.

If there are women in our lives whom we love, we cannot stand for this, cannot willingly or passively allow the narrow agendas of some to do violence to women, endowed with the biological and moral responsibility for bearing human life into the world.

For those of us who believe in the God of the Bible, who sides with the widow, the orphan, the alien, the poor, the despised, the prostitutes, the destitute, the bereft, and who does not say, once and for all, when human life begins, but does endow human beings with the moral capacity to make choices with regard to our own destiny, and trusts us to make those decisions and to take responsibility for them, we cannot stand for this.

Christians should be leaders in providing women with compassionate and comprehensive resources so that informed choices are truly available.

Christians should be advocates for comprehensive sexuality education, proven to be one of the sure ways to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.

Christians should support making contraception available, providing individuals the means to control their fertility for the well-being of themselves and society.

Christians should be preaching that sexuality is a gift, not only because it provides the means by which we give birth to the next generation, but because, aside from pro-creation, sex can be a beautiful and loving experience of the body.

And Christians should never do any of this arrogantly, but always trusting that the picture is bigger than any of us can fit into our imaginations, because God is that big, and because God promises restoration and health, wholeness and abundant life, not only for ourselves, but for the whole world.

Oh, Tom! You so crazy!

Here's some fun Tom Cruise Scientology nutsiness. Look at it before the church takes it down.

Oops! Scientologists already took it down! I'll keep my eyes peeled for a repost.

Update:Egotastic has it here!
(Via The Wormy One.)

Face it, you've always wondered this.

Is it appropriate to display an image of Christ on a pumpkin?

Sure, argues Jay Ball, the guy who runs PumpkinGlow. Of course, Ball is a Mormon, so his pumpkin designs include scenes of Christ ministering to Aztecs and stuff.

As a missionary tool, my patterns have been effective in breaking the ice by people asking questions about the unique non-traditional Halloween pumpkins being displayed during Halloween.

As far as the appropriateness of the image of Christ in a pumpkin goes, I leave it to those who choose to display it. In my own case, I felt it was done in a way that cultivated a spirit of reverence for our savior. It is my hope that the patterns are used in a way that would uplift and inspire those who view them.

So to sum up: Jesus on a pumpkin=A-okay. A lot of Ball's other designs, however, I find highly heretical. Like this one:

Who's crazy now?

Roughly every 6-12 months, I receive an email from some self-proclaimed genius claiming to have discovered or proven some crucial truth about the universe that will surely turn physical science on its head... if only those close-minded academics would open their eyes to the truth!

Last summer it was some guy claiming that the sun doesn't exist; what we observe as the sun is really just a cycling electromagnetic disturbance in the earth's upper atmosphere. This summer, well, it's "David Tagg" and his theory that our solar system - if I get this right - actually orbits the star Sirius. If you're someone who, like me, enjoys laughing at absurdity, you should check out his website. It's no Time Cube, but it's still good for a laugh.

Gene Ray of Time Cube might actually be clinically crazy, but I'm not 100% convinced. However it's my firm belief that the David Taggs of the world are more or less "sane," modulo their incredibly swollen egos.  How can I arrive at this conclusion? Because David's thought process is no more flawed than so many others'. He read something in a book, believed it without sufficient critical thought or experiment, and then sought to show it to the world. Actually, David is doing slightly better than many of his mystical, spiritual, or religious counterparts, given that he actually did some (albeit flawed and pointless) work to try and prove or disprove this crackpot theory.

My adviser often teaches undergraduate condensed matter physics. The description in the course catalog must say something like, "We discuss crystal lattice structures, symmetries, point groups..." He once told me that he usually gets one or two emails before the class starts asking if he will be talking about "healing crystals" and that sort of thing. These are emails from college students. For cripe's sake, they finished high school and they're probably "sane" by clinical standards.

Whenever I find this all too depressing to deal with, I remind myself of an old fortune cookie that's now taped to the lamp on my desk. It reads - and I'm sure this is attributable to someone more famous - "Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think."

So keep on thinking and enjoy the laughs that adherents to the world's assorted mysticisms give us.

Killing in the name of...

Head on over to Christian Outdoorsman and pick up your very own camo bible before they sell out! Oh, and don't worry, they make pink camo bibles - you know, for the yunguns.

Transform World Chart

While perusing the Transform World website I found this chart. Can anyone make any sense out of it? It has all of the clarity of the Voynich Manuscript. What the hell is going on in this thing?

Transform World seeks to serve communities of servant-catalysts in motivating the whole body of Christ to bless the nations. This requires that the body of Christ be mobilized for prayer and collaborative action in order to reach all nations with the good news of the Kingdom of God.

So you wanted to throw a pie at Jerry Falwell's casket, but now you're glad you didn't...

...because you might have gotten blown the fuck up by this guy.

Another reason to love Joss Whedon.

People love Joss Whedon for many reasons: he created Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its offshoot Angel, made one of the best sci-fi shows ever, Firefly, and turned it into a movie after the show had been cancelled. He wrote Toy Story and turned Roseanne into an interesting, mulilayered program about class, sex and family. He's written the greatest version of the X-Men ever, was slated to write big-screen adaptation for Wonder Woman, directed The Office and has tons of films in the works. He's a great guy.

Yesterday on Whedonesque, the site through which Whedon geeks can catch up on all things Joss, he posted regarding the so-called honor killing of Dua Khalil, a Kurdish girl who was stoned to death last month. Whedon turned this into a great discussion on the idea of violence against women, and the idea the pervades too many societies—that women are entities to be tolerated, kept in line and then, if need be, corrected. The phrase Joss, who has created invariably strong female characters, uses is "morally unfinished." And he asks, to paraphrase, what the hell is wrong with us?

Anyway, it's a great post and I haven't done it justice. Please check it out here.

Wait, how did we miss the National Day of Prayer?

Awww. It stemmed from our own backyard and we didn't even notice: Yesterday was the National Day of Prayer, helmed and coordinated by our own Shirley Dobson. Although, I do admit that I felt a little bit holier yesterday. From the President's official proclamation:

A prayerful spirit has always been an important part of our national character, and it is a force that has guided the American people, given us strength, and sustained us in moments of joy and in times of challenge. On this National Day of Prayer, we acknowledge God's grace and ask for His continued guidance in the life of our Nation.

Tru dat, GW. Meanwhile, our beloved Decider will veto a bill extending hate-crime protection to gays. (Because this is America, where cuffing fags to fences and beating them to death should be Constitutionally protected.)