Category: depressing

Clearly We Need More Conservative Judges

Like this one, to help preserve freedom in America.

In a divorce case between two parents who practice the Wiccan religion, a judge spontaneously introduced into the divorce degree a provision that neither of the parents expose the child to “non-mainstream” religious beliefs.

That’s right, the judge banned either of the parents from exposing the child to the religion they shared. The judge was following the suggestion of the “Domestic Relations Counseling Bureau, which provides recommendations to the court on child custody and visitation rights.” The Bureau had worried about the confusion caused by the “discrepancy” between the parents’ religion and the “belief system” adhered to by the Catholic school the boy happened to attend.

The religion of the parents had to be suppressed by court order because it conflicted with the religion of the boy’s school.

Every time I think it’s safe to read the news, they come up with something even more depressing.

On the flip side, everyone involved in the case seems to think it’ll be trivial to get this overturned. But that it happened in the first place is pretty sad.

“Then they came for the Wiccans, and I did not speak out because I was not a Wiccan…”

Another Voice on Bush at Calvin

From Sara — it’s a little harder to stand up and say “yeah, the Calvin I know really doesn’t stand for all that conservative stuff!” when you know you still, to this day, would not be accepted for who you are there, for fear of offending conservative parents and donors.

For all the support and encouragement I recieved from individuals at Calvin, my closeted time there was almost more than I could handle. From what I hear, it’s only getting worse due to an increase in conservative donors and parents. I would not be welcome as an employee of Calvin in any capacity. A marriage/union announcement of mine would never be printed in the magazine. Queer alumni groups must organize on their own. I couldn’t be a member of any contributing church.

Tiger & Free Software

Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) contains some really neat stuff, like wxWidgets, wxPython, and wxPerl preinstalled — but man, I’m experiencing some free software lossage since I upgraded.

I had just been making good friends with the wealth of cool software in the unstable distribution of the Fink project, and, well, you can’t necessarily count on any of that compiling on 10.4. Specifically, my beloved GIMP 2.0 doesn’t compile. And I couldn’t get the XSane plugin working together with GIMP 1.2, which does compile.

Huge disappointment: JACK for OS X doesn’t work on Tiger yet. There goes a lot of great open source audio fun.

Oh well.

Bushehr. Remember that name.

If we suddenly find ourselves in a crisis which “requires” us to bomb a nuclear power plant at Bushehr shortly after Bolton is installed at the U.N., remember that the America-hating liberals told you that was what they were up to. Just like they told you about the trumped up pretexts for war in Iraq.

BTW, if we don’t end up bombing Iran, I will be very happy; this will be a situation where it would be wonderful not to be able to say “I told you so.”

“Backfired”?

I’ve heard about a half dozen times this morning (because I’m in a location where CNN Headline News is on) that an attempt to show support for gay Catholics by wearing rainbow sashes to Communion has “backfired,” in that the sash wearers were denied Communion.

That term is not used in the story online.

It seems nonsensical to me, because it makes it sound like this is a defeat for the Rainbow Sash Alliance. But thinking of it as a defeat shows a complete lack of understanding of the process of nonviolent protest. The point of nonviolent protest is to make injustice visible, to bring injustice into such sharp relief that people are no longer willing to tolerate it — including, in the best case scenario, the people who had previously been perpetrating it.

A hundred faithful Catholics being denied communion for supporting the people who are being marginalized and oppressed by the Catholic Church is not a defeat. It is a victory.

No one can defeat people calling for justice and calling attention to injustice. Only they could defeat themselves, by giving up. Anything else is victory.

I’ve also noticed that CNN is speaking every 5 minutes about how appalling it is that one of the sources Newsweek used in the “Koran in the toilet” story has withdrawn his story, and yet, Newsweek ran with it anyway despite the fact that in the future he was going to withdraw it. Their psychic powers failed them.

CNN’s not mentioning at all that that source wasn’t where the story originated — that source was confirming (and now is not confirming in terms so certain) the stories that detainees themselves had given about what was done to their Korans when they were in custody.

I’m pretty sure this is CNN, but the way this news is being reported makes me wonder they aren’t rebroadcasting Fox News stories by mistake…

But hey, at least they’re making sure we know what’s important — I’ve also heard about a half dozen times this morning that Everybody Loves Raymond is reaching its last episode, and Motley Crue are teaming up with America’s Most Wanted. So we’re getting the real hardcore investigative journalism too.

And I’m gonna have to leave soon because my brain is beating its tiny fists against my skull trying to escape.