Anti-Reality Alert: TVC Gives Appearance of Caring About Women’s Rights

From The Sheldon Shack:

Attend Rally For Rifqa Bary This Monday!

November 13, 2009 — Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, two prominent leaders in the anti-jihad movement, are asking people to come to a rally from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday, November 16th at Dorrian Commons Park near the Franklin County Juvenile Court in Columbus, Ohio.

The focus of the rally is Rifqa Bary, a young Muslim woman

What?  Christian theocrats actually expressing concern for the life of a woman?  And a non-christian one at that?

Well, paying close attention will reveal what is really afoot.  Picking up with the very next word in the above passage:

whose conversion to Christianity caused her father to threaten to kill her. 

Ah hah!

So, here’s the reality of the rally:

1. The Sheldon Shack isn’t really concerned about the personal autonomy of a woman.
2. The Sheldon Shack isn’t really concerned about the personal autonomy of a person who is not Christian.
3. The Sheldon Shack in all likelihood would side with the father if the daughter had converted from Christianity to Islam or – gasp! – had decided to exorcise all fairy tales from her life.

Don’t believe that last one?

Rifqa took refuge with a Florida pastor and his family but has been ordered back to Ohio where her family lives.  Officials in Ohio are deliberating whether or not to return her to her parents.

Anyone out there want to do any research as to what the Sheldon Shack’s position is regarding parental rights – such as the ‘right’ to prevent a daughter from crossing state lines to do something legal…

…such as seeing anything that might in any way suggest that homosexuality and/or transsexuality is not evil?

…such as obtaining a legal abortion?

…or to avoid any involuntary participation in any ceremony that is in any way connected to any form of mythology?

“We have all seen ‘honor killings’ by adherents of shariah law,” said TVC’s Andrea Lafferty.  “We do not want Rifqa to die because she accepted Jesus Christ.”

Here’s a thought: Why don’t you – and people like you – stop putting people such as Rifqa in the position she’s in now?  Seriously – isn’t it quite selfish (not to mention recklessly dangerous) to con people like Rifqa into doing something that you – and people like you – know is going to put their lives in danger?

And BTW…

If your deity is so all-powerful, why can’t said deity step in directly and prevent the killing?

Not that powerful?

And one other thing…

I seem to recall something in Christian propaganda about Christianity being worth dying for.

I’m just sayin’….

Welcome to the Thirteenth Century

Ponder the following:

Abortion opponents in the Senate are seeking tough restrictions in the health care overhaul bill, a move that could roil a shaky Democratic effort to pass President Barack Obama’s signature issue by year’s end.

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said Monday it’s unlikely he could support a bill that doesn’t clearly prohibit federal dollars from going to pay for abortions.

What exactly is the point of having a Democratic majority if the “Democrats” give misogynistic theocrats everything that they want?

I’m just askin’……………

To Be Fair, As Professional Victims Go, The Dredge Has Nothing on The Predge

As if it was possible for Carrie ‘Fake Boobs, Fake Christian Piety, But Real Sex Tape’ Prejean to have even less credibility…

Yes, when you make the fossil who didn’t know who Jerry Seinfeld was look as sharp as David Schuster, its time to get thee to wherever the hell you came from before you thought that a beauty pageant would legitimize you.

[ADDENDUM: I suggest reading the comments about this incident over at Gawker.]

Welcome to the Creepshow (Sans Teabag)

[UPDATE: When I made the title for this post, I was just slinging pejorative.  Little did I know that Sheldon actually did run straight from the ENDA hearing at the Dirksen Building to the teabagger festival over at the Capitol itself.]

A back row view of the Senate ENDA hearing last Thursday:

Closer than I ever intended to be to Lou Sheldon.

And, yes, I still feel dirty.

…And Creatures Rejected by the Black Lagoon

When I exited the DC Metro at the Capitol South station on my way to the Senate ENDA hearing Thursday, this was what I encountered:

And though I typically have no cause to praise organizations that perpetuate dependence on mythology (after all, such dependence tends to produce ‘minds’ such as those depicted above), but there was visible, albeit silent, opposition to those  who were once human though now crainially teabagged:

Intellectual Zombies

Yes, there are intellectual zombies…

and most of them are Steve King:

“All Americans have health care, every single one.”

Did he really say that?

Yup.

He did.

Missed it by THAT Much

Media Matters on the latest gem from Crazy Uncle Chuckles:

Robertson: “I don’t really believe homosexuals want to get married,” they just want to “destroy marriage”

Well, ol’ Pat is actually just gettin’ a bit senile.  What he was trying to do was give the mission of his CBN Regent University Law School:

We’re not really trying to produce lawyers.  We’re just wanting to manufacture credentials for people who will go out and destroy the American system of secular law.

That IS what you really meant, right Pat?

What else could Monica Goodling’s existence be proof of?

Ergo, Marriage Law Isn’t Law

The way Penna Dexter sees it:

The traditional definition of marriage does not interfere with anyone’s personal liberty.  And it does not exclude homosexuals from the protection of the laws.

Except, of course, marriage law – because the so-called ‘traditional’ definition does interfere with the liberty of any person who wants to marry someone who is legally classified as the same sex as said person.

But there’s a bigger issue here.

Constitutionally, courts are supposed to interpret and uphold the law, not rewrite it.

Hmmmm…

I wonder if Penna had that same sentiment ten years ago next week when two judges on the San Antonio Court of Appeals re-wrote Texas marital and identity law to exclude transsexuals.

Methinks not.

However, even that’s not the bigger issue.

GAY DIVORCE WOULD UNDERMINE MARRIAGE

That’s the title of her 10-paragraph treatise.

Anyone who utters – or pecks – those words (or anything similar) should be locked in an airtight room until HOW is articulated.

Manny, Moe and Hack

Well, what else would one call this lineup on Fox ‘News’?

Juan Williams on the left, Tammy Bruce on the right and – yes, this is funny - Ken Hutcherson in the middle.

Crooks and Liars has some good analysis in general about the derivative subject of the insanity-fest (Williams’ inability to appreciate why anyone would have anything negative to say about his viewing never-gonnabee NFL owner Rush Limbaugh as civil rights victim), but this little nugget is worth spreading ‘cross the ‘net, Hutcherson’s:

heavy involvement in promoting a virulent and violent anti-gay organization called Watchmen on the Walls. This is a global evangelical-Christian outfit that, elsewhere in the world (particularly in Eastern Europe) is associated with violent anti-gay hate crimes.

I reported on a Watchmen gathering in nearby Lynnwood a couple of years ago (photos here). I also remember his sermon very clearly:

Hutcherson’s talk was similarly soothing, following the “hate the sin but love the sinner” reasoning common among fundamentalists, but clearly belying his own war-oriented rhetoric and the talk of gay “abomination” pervasive among the Watchmen.

“I don’t believe all discrimination is wrong,” he said. “I discriminate based on what is right. God discriminates too.

“Today, disagreement means hate. If I disagree with you, I hate you. Evidently, God is the biggest hater in the world. The first thing we Christians need to take back is the right to disagree.”

Of course, if it were only disagreement — and not condemnation and eliminationism — that Hutcherson and the Watchmen on the Walls were proffering this weekend, no one would have minded. But it wasn’t.

The odd thing about hearing this kind of lame rationale from Hutcherson is that he is an African American man. As it happens, I’ve listened to a sermon that used nearly identical logic — that discrimination isn’t about hate if God commands it in the Bible — at least once before. It was delivered by the late Rev. Richard Butler at an annual Aryan Nations Congress in Hayden Lake, Idaho. And he was talking about black people.

Hutcherson also believes that laws against anti-gay discrimination are different than those against racial discrimination because the latter is “an immutable characteristic” while the former is “a chosen behavior.” (The problem with that rationale, of course, is that those same laws cover anti-religious discrimination. Is religion an “immutable characteristic”, or a “chosen behavior”?)

The more people who point out the incongruity between ‘civil rights have to be based on immutable charateristics’ and ‘civil rights include religion’, the better – ditto (get it? that’s a Rushbo pun!) for Hutcherson’s quasi-treasonous association with the Watchmen wackos.

Fox ‘News’ Announces That It Is Running For President

Not exactly – but if entities could run (and, given that the christianist, corporatist wing of the Supreme Court believes that corporations are no different than human beings, who is to say that such a day won’t come?), what would the latest Fox ‘News’ poll say about its own future plans?

Hmmm, not sure this line of questioning will make it easier for Fox to argue that they’re a legit news organization.

From the internals of the new Fox poll:

The Obama administration is criticizing FOX News Channel for its coverage of the administration. If the disagreement between the Obama administration and FOX News Channel continues, who do you think will come out on top?

Administration 39%

Fox News 43%

Breaking: Fox finds more think Fox will defeat the White House! I wonder if this will persuade the White House communications team to drop its crusade.

Naturally, the number is driven largely by Republicans, who think Fox will win the standoff by a large margin, 65%-26%.

In a sense, this isn’t a new concept.  I once saw an interview with Mason Williams – of “Classical Gas” fame but who was also a writer for the classic(al) Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour – in which he said that the idea of having Pat Paulsen as a joke candidate in the 1968 presidential election was actually not the first plan for a joke candidacy for the SmoBroShow that year.  The first idea was to run an inanimate object (maybe the fact that Richard Nixon was already in the race dissuaded them from this?). 

But, I wonder if all of the non-functioning brains at Fox ‘News’ make it a defacto inanimate object?  Maybe Williams can end his career by reviving the ‘inanimate object candidacy’ for Fox – which would be an even more bizarre joke than the Paulsen candidacy.