tagged w/ Christian Right
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On Sunday night - a homemade explosive device was detonated outside a window of a Planned Parenthood office in Wisconsin - but you haven't heard a peep about it from mainstream media. The Fear Machine is tearing apart American society. How can we turn it off and return America to the land of the free and the home of the brave?
The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann on RT TV & FSTV "live" 9pm and 11pm check www.thomhartmann.com/tv for local listings
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101720157
"Are you afraid or are you still out shopping as GW told you too???"On Sunday night - a homemade explosive device was detonated outside a window of a... more
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KB723
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11dim
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The gap between fundamentalist and fascist is narrowing.
The Christian Right’s assault on America is frightening, and, as someone who grew up in a world of religious fanaticism, my personal experience gives me a sharp sense of where this is heading. In his 2007 book, American Fascists, the Christian Right and the War on America, Chris Hedges describes what America would look like if evangelicals, or dominionists, complete their takeover of the American political system
“America becomes, in this militant Biblicism, an agent of god, and all political and intellectual opponents of America’s Christian leaders are viewed, quite simply, as agents of Satan. Under Christian dominion, America will be no longer a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the 10 Commandments form the basis of our legal system, creationism and ‘Christian values’ form the basis of our educational system, and the media and government proclaim the Good News to one and all. Labor unions, civil rights laws and public schools will be abolished. Women will be removed from the workforce to stay at home, and all those deemed insufficiently Christian will be denied citizenship. Aside from its proselytizing mandate, the federal government will be reduced to the protection of property rights and ‘homeland security…’ The only legitimate voices in this state will be Christian. All others will be silenced.”
The takeover is well underway. As of 2007 Christian fundamentalists held “a majority of seats in 36 percent of all Republican party state committees, or 18 of 50 states, along with large minorities in remaining states.” Furthermore, “Forty-five senators and 186 members of the House of Representatives earned approval ratings of 80 to 100 percent from the three most influential Christian advocacy groups: the Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council.” And, of course, the Bush administration “diverted billions of dollars of taxpayer money from secular and governmental social service organizations to faith-based organizations, bankrolling Churches and organizations that seek to dismantle American democracy and create a theocratic state.”
The similarities between this movement and Islamic fundamentalism are striking. According to Hedges both “do not tolerate other forms of belief or disbelief. They are at war with artistic and cultural expression. They seek to silence the media. They call for the subjugation of women. They promote severe sexual repression, and they seek to express themselves through violence.”
(read more at link)The gap between fundamentalist and fascist is narrowing.
The Christian... more
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How taxpayers are funding the world's biggest Christian evangelical university.
June 29, 2011 |
One might think that a private, decidedly conservative, and totally evangelical Christian University, that was founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, who was openly critical of government programs, would spurn federal dollars.
Au contraire mon ami.
"I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!" - The Rev. Jerry Falwell, America Can Be Saved
This year, the 40th anniversary of Liberty University, Rev. Falwell's dream -- now being looked after by his son Jerry Jr. -- has become a reality thanks in large part to America's taxpayers.
Founded by Falwell in 1971, Liberty University, which according to its website is "the largest and fastest growing Christian Evangelical university in the world" and "the largest private university in Virginia," is "celebrating 40 Years of Training Champions for Christ."
Liberty U. receives massive government aid
During the last fiscal year alone, Liberty received about $445 million in federal financial aid money, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Over the past few years, Liberty University has raked in so much taxpayer money from the federal government that is now ranked among the top ten universities in the United States receiving federal dollars. It is also Virginia's top recipient of federal money.
In a 2009 piece for RH Reality Check titled, "Why is the Federal Government Supporting Evangelism?" Eleanor J. Bader pointed out that LU's [Jesse] Helms School of Government "crows that it turns out 'Christ-centered leaders, able to apply God's word in every area of life.' What's more, LU's webpage showcases its mission, promising students an 'action-oriented curriculum dedicated to world evangelism and repudiation of political correctness.'
"Not sure what that means? The site explains: 'A strong commitment to political conservatism, total rejection of socialism, and firm support for America's economic system of free enterprise.'"
Since it doesn't get much more religiously oriented than Liberty University, a fair question to ask is: Should a private sectarian institution be receiving federal funds?
"The short answer is that it would be difficult -- if not impossible -- to challenge the government grants going to Liberty students," Rob Boston, Senior Policy Analyst with Americans United, told me in an e-mail exchange. "This can be difficult area of the law. The Supreme Court has always been more lax on aid to religious colleges than it has been on aid to secondary schools. In years past, the court has held that tax aid cannot go to institutions deemed 'pervasively sectarian' but that such aid was permissible for those schools that were judged to be 'religiously affiliated.' This test has begun to erode at the high court, however, under the conservative majority. Complicating the matter is that the fact that many conservative legal scholars argue that Pell Grants are actually aid to the student, not the school -- an argument that has been embraced by the Supreme Court's conservative bloc."
"The rapid growth of Liberty's online program has fueled the increased reliance on federal aid dollars," said Robert Ritz, LU's executive director of financial aid Lynchburg, Virginia's The News & Advance recently reported. In addition to 12,000 students on campus, the University enrolled nearly 52,000 students online last year.
"It has ballooned," said Ritz of Liberty's financial aid volume. "In some categories, I've seen us rank no. 3 nationally, or in the top ten. It's because of our size and the growth." According to The News & Advance, "In the span of a year, Liberty's experienced about a 56 percent spike in federal student aid, from $284 million in 2008-2009 to $445 million in 2009-2010, according to Department of Education data compiled by The News & Advance. (LU calculates the total aid at $432 million and $277 million, still a 56 percent increase.)"
Read it all here
http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/151442/why_is_jerry_falwell%27s_evangelical_university_getting_filthy_rich_off_your_tax_moneyHow taxpayers are funding the world's biggest Christian evangelical university.... more
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October 21st, 2010
03:14 PM ET
Churches contribute to gay suicides, most Americans believe
Fort Worth Texas Councilman Joel Burns’ videotaped story about being gay and bullied as a child recently went viral on the internet.
Two out of three Americans believe gay people commit suicide at least partly because of messages coming out of churches and other places of worship, a survey released Thursday found.
More than four out of 10 Americans say the message coming out of churches about gay people is negative, and about the same number say those messages contribute "a lot" to negative perceptions of gay and lesbian people.
Catholics were the most critical of their own churches' messages on homosexuality, while white evangelical Christians gave their churches the highest grades, the survey found.
The Public Religion Research Institute asked 1,017 Americans their views on religion and homosexuality between October 14 and 17, in the wake of a highly publicized rash of suicides by gay people.
Gay rights campaigner Dan Savage said the idea that churches send out an anti-gay message "totally jibes with my experience and that of millions of other gay and lesbian people."
He cited Joel Burns, a Forth Worth, Texas, city councilman whose emotional tale of being bullied as a young gay man went viral on the internet.
"He remembers being told to go home and commit suicide and that he was going to hell," Savage said, adding that the source of such attitudes "wasn't in algebra."
Leaders of the Christian right "have redefined Christianity so that it is about being anti-gay," he said.
And he cited other poll findings that suggest more Americans than ever before define themselves as having no religion.
"When you dig down, you found people who said they were Christians who didn't want to be identified with being anti-gay," he argued.
But Jim Daly, the head of Focus on the Family, argued in a commentary for CNN that Christian churches are not to blame.
"To violate the dignity of another person, in any form or fashion, is to contradict the very basis of Gospel-centered living. And to suggest that an orthodox understanding of Christianity encourages abuse against homosexuals is a sad misreading of the very tenets of the faith," he said.
"Some self-described Christians do not act in Christ-like ways toward those who are different than they are," he conceded.
"They save their harshest judgments for the sins they don't struggle with themselves. That is not biblical Christianity in practice," he said.
Only five out of 100 people gave churches generally an A for their handling of "the issue of homosexuality" in the Public Religion Research Institute survey, while 28 percent said their own church handled it well.
One in three people said that messages from places of worship contribute "a lot" to higher rates of suicide among gay and lesbian youth.
Another one in three said they contribute "a little." Only one in five said they do not contribute at all. The rest said they did not know.
Americans were equally split on whether homosexual relationships between adults are wrong, with 44 percent saying yes and 46 percent saying no.
The sampling margin on the survey, a joint project of PRRI and Religion News Service, is plus or minus 3 percentage points.October 21st, 2010
03:14 PM ET
Churches contribute to gay suicides, most Americans... more
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The debate has been raging for sometime about Darwin vs. Intelligent Design. Lumber Jack Bob brings a third party into the mix, Mother Nature. This BOOK NOOK feature is usually played early Sunday morning during our public affairs programming, but this one created quite a stir. How did Lindsay Lohan get into this one?The debate has been raging for sometime about Darwin vs. Intelligent Design. Lumber... more
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Televangelist Pat Robertson said Wednesday that earthquake-ravaged Haiti has been "cursed" by a "pact to the devil."
"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it," he said on Christian Broadcasting Network's "The 700 Club." "They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal."
Robertson said that "ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other" and he contrasted Haiti with its neighbor, the Dominican Republic.
"That island of Hispaniola is one island. It is cut down the middle; on the one side is Haiti on the other is the Dominican Republic," he said. "Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to god and out of this tragedy I'm optimistic something good may come. But right now we are helping the suffering people and the suffering is unimaginable."Televangelist Pat Robertson said Wednesday that earthquake-ravaged Haiti has been... more
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This is all about demonizing Christians. Always demonize the enemy before making your move.This is all about demonizing Christians. Always demonize the enemy before making your... more
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Extremists can show up in every religion including Christianity. Apparently, some Christians want to see Obama gone from office and don't care how that comes about. Their supposed purposes mirror that of the Taliban.
Makes you wonder if they are really Christian.Extremists can show up in every religion including Christianity. Apparently, some... more
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Lo and behold, the Bible has gotten too liberal, according to a group of conservatives. And it needs a little editing.
That's the inspiration behind the Conservative Bible Project, which seeks to take the text back to its supposed right-wing roots.
Yes, even scripture is not orthodox enough for the modern conservative. Not that it's the fault of the author(s), exactly. The group cites a few reasons why the Bible is too progressive: "Lack of precision in the original language ... lack of precision in modern language" and "translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one."
Read more at the link.Lo and behold, the Bible has gotten too liberal, according to a group of... more
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Jeremy Scahill sparred with NBC political director Chuck Todd on Friday, forcefully criticizing journalists and lawmakers for treading lightly on Blackwater's recently-revealed misdeeds.
Newly declassified memos this week showed that the CIA hired Blackwater, a private military security company, years ago as part of an effort to kill senior Al-Qaeda officials and other designated terrorists.
Scahill, who has written a popular book about Blackwater, had scathing comments about the organization, calling it "Erik Prince's Christian supremacist fighting force to eliminate Muslims and destroy Islam globally, and then they bill taxpayers again for this killing that they're doing and they're not held to the same standard as soldiers."
"There are Iraqi and Afghan forces that are forced to face down against them, when, I'm sorry, the US Congress does nothing to stop it," he continued, "and journalists have done nothing to hold the White House accountable now, Chuck, or under Bush. This has not been an issue and yet it constitutes more than half of the fighting force in Afghanistan."
Scahill singled out Todd, a fellow panelist on HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher", for not taking the issue more seriously. "Chuck, you called it political cat-nip to talk about the CIA and Cheney's role in this, because it distracts from the important issues," he said. "This is a central issue and you called it cable cat-nip."
Here is video of Scahill singling out Todd:Jeremy Scahill sparred with NBC political director Chuck Todd on Friday, forcefully... more
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A pro-life group says that the Western world's current low birth rate could mean that Muslims will overtake the West's population in the coming decades.
The Population Research Institute said the Western world is facing a crisis with almost every country having birth rates below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman, according to OneNewsNow.
The replacement fertility is the total fertility rate at which women would have only enough children to replace themselves and their partner. At 2.1 births per women, the population growth through reproduction would be about zero.
"It's because Christian and Jews are refusing to have children, refusing to get married, [and] having such low birth rates that the Muslims are going to inherit the Earth," said PRI spokesman Joseph D'Agostino to OneNewsNow. "It's not anything the Muslims are doing; it's what Christians and Jews are not doing."
CLICK FOR FULL ARTICLE....A pro-life group says that the Western world's current low birth rate could mean... more
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"US beauty queen could lose title
Miss California Carrie Prejean could be stripped of her title after organisers say she breached her contract by keeping topless photos secret.
A spokesman for the pageant said her disqualification was being discussed.
Apart from not being up front over the semi-nude pictures which appeared on an internet site, organisers of the Miss California USA pageant say Carrie Prejean also breached her contract by appearing unauthorised in commercials."
Now, let's get this straight, if that's the appropriate word here, there is no commandment amongst the Ten Commandments that has anything whatsoever to do with homosexuality, one way or the other, but there are two little inconvenient ones: "Thou shalt not lie," and "Thou shalt not bear false witness."
Apparently, "Christian" Carrie Prejean has no problem at all breaking those two by lying to the Miss California Beauty Pageant about her semi-nude photographs and by appearing in a dishonest, hateful NOM advertisement."US beauty queen could lose title
Miss California Carrie Prejean could be... more
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RCS
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"No Offence, But You Deserve To Be Killed--From Miss California"
YouTube has produced some splendid parodies of Miss California's little hate speech--it's just the way she was raised, you know--as well as some good ones of the latest NOM advertisement.
This one is pretty clever and rather funny."No Offence, But You Deserve To Be Killed--From Miss California"
YouTube... more
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RCS
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"One of Britain’s top medal hopes for the London Olympics has been kept home from school by his parents because bullies are threatening to break his legs.
Teenage diving sensation Tom Daley shot to national fame when he was selected for the Beijing Games and became one of Britain's youngest ever Olympians.
But the top student has been turned into a figure of hate and is regularly ridiculed by pupils who call him ‘Speedo boy’.
The bullying came to a head last week when an older boy cornered Tom and said: ‘How much are those legs worth? We’re going to break your legs.’"
This article from "The Daily Mail" shows just how much of a problem bullying can be in Britain, and it is no better here in the United States. One of things that is particularly disgusting here in America is that the same evangelical Christian and ultra-conservative groups that are working to deny gay and lesbian Americans their full human rights are, also, actively working to block any legislation to stop bullying in schools. As some of the children bullied are either gay, or perceived as being gay, these groups want to make sure that any child who might actually be gay is not protected in any way. In order to accomplish this, they don't care how many other children are, also, attacked and harassed. This article clearly demonstrates that when bullying is tolerated, anyone can become a victim, even an Olympic swimming star."One of Britain’s top medal hopes for the London Olympics has been kept... more
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If you haven't seen Inofuiwell's posting "A rainbow Coalition of people Everywhere are coming together in LOVE to prevent same sex marriage?," you should take a look at the original video contained therein.
The National Organization for Marriage put up a lot of money and hired actors to portray terrified Americans scared that all of their liberties will be taken away by the evils of gay marriage.
Unfortunately, for them, the Human Rights Campaign, the leading gay and lesbian rights group in this country, not only got ahold of their video, but it, also, acquired the tapes of the auditions.
Needless to say, all the creative folks at YouTube have had a field day with this one.
This is one of the best parodies. Enjoy!If you haven't seen Inofuiwell's posting "A rainbow Coalition of people... more
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Cenk Uygur explains why everybody should be skeptical about any biblical argument, whether it is for good or bad.Cenk Uygur explains why everybody should be skeptical about any biblical argument,... more
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Michelle Goldberg, the author of Kingdom Coming, discusses why McCain is now running the most starkly right wing campaign in memory.Michelle Goldberg, the author of Kingdom Coming, discusses why McCain is now running... more
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Does Sarah Palin believe in the Anti-Christ? Does she believe true Christians will be whisked up to heaven sometime in the near future? Does she expect Jesus to come back to earth in our lifetimes and battle the armies of Satan? Would biblical prophecies about Armageddon influence her foreign policy positions on Israel and Russia? These are urgent questions the media have failed to ask. According to Chip Berlet, a leading expert on the Christian right, mainstream reporters tend to view apocalyptic fundamentalists as a "silly little side show" in American political life, when, in fact, one of their own may soon be a heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world.Does Sarah Palin believe in the Anti-Christ? Does she believe true Christians will be... more
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lagan
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The Christian Right comes around on John McCain, Barack Obama picks up some frenemies, and John McCain weighs a one-term pledge.The Christian Right comes around on John McCain, Barack Obama picks up some frenemies,... more
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