What The Hell Is Wrong With Rep. Courtney Rogers?

I’m asking because Tennessee State Rep. Courtney Rogers of the “faith, family, freedom” caucus gave a seriously unhinged rant on the House floor Monday night and I’m starting to wonder what’s wrong with her. It came long after the House decided to defund UT’s Office of Diversity & Inclusion and redirect the money toward “In God We Trust” stickers for police cruisers. I know, that’s pretty crazy in and of itself, it’s the kind of hippie-punching nonsense the idiots in our legislature waste time on every day. But near as I can tell, Rogers had nothing to say when debate over that actual legislation was going on. But long toward the end of the day when business was concluding, she offered this ridiculous rant on the topic.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I know I’ve been visibly agitated on the House floor tonight, and for that I apologize, but I have an announcement from the Hawaiian caucus tonight.

You know, it’s not easy being a minority, I get it. But try being an endangered species. A Hawaiian in Tennessee. You know, my grandmother in Hawaii would go offer her lava rock offerings to the family god, the Aumakua. And then she would go to missionary school and pray to good lord Jesus because she didn’t want to offend all the gods, so she kinda missed the point. But that being said, missionary school taught servitude to minorities, and the Hawaiians had to fight for education, for English, for math, for science, and we got it.

And as I can see, here are minorities. They have it. If you want to help minorities then what I wanted to say here was yes, continue to shut down those specific diversity offers that waste dollars to teach us ways to somehow sexually abuse our bodies or tell us what not to believe. I would fight any office that would tell me I cannot pray to my family Aumakua, even though I don’t, or to the good lord Jesus. You know as much I would say no Christmas, no Buddha, No Allah, I don’t pray to any of those, but we have a thing called ideological freedom here in America.

If you want to help minorities then quit pushing this intellectual rubbish and start supporting those diversity offices that are recruiting the best, from light meat to dark meat, across the entire spectrum, and start pushing hard work and mental accuity. Those things bring about progress and success and equality. Mahalo.

What the hell is she smoking? Light meat to dark meat? Hawaiians in Tennessee are endangered? Minorities in Tennessee have everything they need so just shut up?

You can see her rant somewhere around the 2 hour and 58 minute mark here, during the announcements. What’s even more alarming is that she appears to be holding a piece of papers as she’s talking, so I wonder if she wrote this drivel down in advance.

Anyway, this is a whole new level of wackadoodle that I can’t even explain.

And yes, this is the same Courtney Rogers who wants to arm college students because of Kent State.

Was Discovery Communications Complicit In Covering Up A Crime? Inquiring Minds ….

I first wrote about the Quiverfull movement waaay back in 2009. I called it a cult, and it is a cult, a creepy pedophilia cult (if you aren’t familiar with this group or its beliefs, Gawker has a handy dandy rundown under the headline “Quiverfull of Shit.”)

I’m not the least bit surprised to learn that Josh Duggar has admitted to sexually molesting children as they slept — some of them his own sisters. I’m not the least bit surprised to learn that one of the leaders of this movement, Bill Gothard, has himself been accused of sex-based offenses.

What I do find interesting is that it’s become increasingly clear that The Learning Channel/Discovery Communications knew of Josh Duggar’s sex offenses years before the first show of the reality series aired, while the Duggars were starring in specials on sister network Discovery Health. And, despite knowing this information, they still signed the family to star in their own reality show, falsely promoted the family as some kind of wholesome Christian novelty, misrepresented the family to the public, and profited from it. They lied to their advertisers and they lied to their viewers. How is this not fraud?

According to the police report published by InTouch, the investigation was sparked when someone tipped off an Oprah Winfrey staffer in 2006, in advance of a taping by the family on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Here’s how it all went down:

The Duggars told police that at the time Josh was accused of, and admitting to, these sexual acts, “a family friend aware of what had happened had written down in a letter what he knew of [redacted, Josh’s] actions…That letter had been placed in a book and had subsequently been forgotten about. Just recently [in 2006] the book had been loaned to someone else with the letter in it and another person discovered the letter.

The Duggars refused to tell police who wrote the letter and who found it.

When the family was scheduled to appear on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show in 2006, an email was sent to the show warning them about the alleged molestation. The email was written by a 61-year-old female who is not identified.

Harpo Studios faxed the letter to the Department of Human Services hotline. The report was then opened for investigation, leading to the investigation by Springdale police.

When police asked Jim Bob to bring Josh in for an interview in 2006, he attempted to hire a lawyer and refused to produce his son for questioning. At least two lawyers refused to take his case. “Det. Hignite received a voice mail from Mr. Duggar stating that [redacted] had hired an attorney and would not be coming in for an interview.”

Oprah Winfrey has been very open about her own history of being a survivor of child sexual abuse. So good for her and her staffers for starting this whole ball rolling. And shame on everyone who subsequently covered it up: the Arkansas state trooper who let Josh Duggar off the hook and two years later was himself jailed for child pornography, and most especially Discovery Communications. Because it defies belief that TLC and Discovery didn’t know about this — indeed, after the Oprah cancellation, the internet was on fire with rumors about Josh Duggar’s sexual offenses. At the very least, Discovery Health would have wanted to know about the abrupt and last-minute Oprah cancellation.

This needs to be investigated. The FCC needs to look into this. If a basic-cable network is covering up crimes against children and then promoting a pedophilia cult into the popular culture, they are not acting in the public interest. This is far worse than Bono saying an award is “fucking awesome” or Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction. These are real crimes, and it appears the network not only knew about it, but ignored it so they could promote this creepy, far-from-wholesome family for their own financial gain.

Shameful.

Holy Loophole

I just love this story: A swinger’s club which had operated without incident for years near Nashville’s oh-so-hot Gulch neighborhood was recently forced to move because of a new mega-development going in. So they were going to relocate to a building in Madison, north of town. And the good Christian folks up there got wind of it and decided they didn’t want no swingin’ sullying their neighborhood and would someone please think of the children and so the Tennessee State Legislature and the Nashville Metro Council passed laws that prevented “social clubs” from being in certain neighborhoods (small government alert!), and so now the swinger’s club is reopening as a church. Whose members all pay dues to the swinger’s club:

On paper, at least, plans have changed dramatically for a Madison property where a swingers club tried to open before city and state policymakers moved swiftly to block it.

The owners now plan to open a church — a church that honors the paid memberships from the swingers club.

The United Fellowship Center at 520 Lentz Drive will honor memberships to The Social Club, according to a member newsletter, but baseball caps, bandanas, skull caps and sagging pants won’t be tolerated.

The center was “founded on the basic belief that we are all children of the same universe,” the newsletter says. “Every individual is free to practice their religion in the manner of their choosing, as mandated by the First Amendment, so long as that expression does not impinge upon the rights or freedoms of others and is in accordance with the government’s laws.”

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ….

By the way, I spotted the decal above on a mailbox outside a bbq place here in town during the height of the swinger’s club controversy. I thought it was pretty funny. I just love how we’re all in favor of small government here until sex gets involved and then it’s like OMG WE GOTTA PASS A LAW. I mean honestly, I do not care what people do in their bedrooms, who (or how many) they share a bed with, who marries whom, etc. It simply is not my business. As long as it’s all consenting adults, I really would prefer to not even know about everybody else’s sex life.

I used to live in a small town in Kentucky and let me say, you would be shocked at how many of these fine Christian folks who were so downright upright were also taking trips into Nashville on the weekends to indulge in carnal entertainment. I’d place bets that some of those passing laws targeting this “social club” have indulged in a little swing time themselves.

Doing It Wrong

I am not sure why East Tennessee State University has opened its campus to crackpot evangelists who harass students, but apparently being fat-shamed and berated as a “fornicator” is something you must endure as an ETSU student. From the Johnson City Press:

One student, whose identity will be protected by The Press, emailed the newspaper complaining that she was verbally harassed by Jackson in front of a large group of her peers when the streetcorner deacon said she “looked like (she) weighed as much as a football linebacker.”

[…]

But Jackson, who travels a circuit of U.S. college campuses issuing provocative condemnations of nearly every vice, bad habit, alternative lifestyle and differing viewpoint, properly filled out and submitted his application to speak in ETSU’s Borchuck Plaza, one of the college’s defined limited public forum areas, Smith said.

Apparently this guy is part of a fundie outfit called Revival Mission Ministries, which sends preachers out to college campuses to do “open-air preaching,” in which they rail and rant against pretty much everything they don’t agree with. They look an awful lot like the Westboro Baptist Church cult. Here they are at East Carolina University back in March:

Note the joy on the students’ faces. /sarcasm

According to the story, Jackson’s ranting was followed by yet another raving street preacher the next day, with the campus public safety office erecting wooden barriers around him, something deemed necessary after Jackson’s appearance the day prior. Ye shall know them by their fruits, folks.

This isn’t preaching, it’s harassment. It’s ego-indulging, attention-seeking, self-promotion. In fact, people like this aren’t doing themselves or their cause any favors:

A landmark Pew Research from 2012 shows that attachment by young people to organized religious bodies is on the decline. Many of those who don’t belong to a church, synagogue, or mosque still practice religion informally to a certain extent. However, they have grown wary of the way that traditional institutions mix political power with the pursuit of otherworldly aims.

Nine out of ten older Americans are directly affiliated with a religion, a statistic that goes down to two-thirds with the youngest adults. Softened commitment generally means less strong attachment to God and less frequent attendance at services. It also entails more liberal political views, a higher likelihood of voting Democratic, and support for abortion rights.

Here’s a video of Jackson, pulled from the ministry’s website. As one might expect, he doesn’t seem to be winning many converts. Instead, he seems to be indulging his ego. He also seems to have a very narrow view of “sin.” Intolerance and unkindness are just as much sins as what you do with your naughty parts. Not sure why college students should be subjected to this. Jackson seems young and inexperienced, perhaps in a few years he’ll wake up and realize he’s Doing It Wrong.

Consequence-Free Sex

It was entirely predictable that right-wing males would act like giant assholes in the wake of the Hobby Lobby ruling; after all, these are the perpetually-aggrieved folks who have felt neutered by “feminazis” since women first demanded the vote.

My favorite response was from Douchebag Emeritus Erick W. Erickson, who tweeted:

And yet, because Hobby Lobby pays for men’s Viagra, that is exactly what this employer is doing: subsidizing consequence-free sex, only just for men. Because, by virtue of biology, all sex for men is consequence-free. It just is. Birth control levels the playing field for women. And it is no surprise that conservative men, whose most unifying feature is an overarching inferiority complex, have been threatened by that since the first cave lady brewed her special cup of herbal tea to keep the babies away. Insecure men will always try to control that which they cannot control. And that’s what we have here.

This, from The New Republic, sums it up thusly:

There’s a reason so many women were outraged on Monday. They saw the decision as yet another attempt to preserve the old double-standard—to dump most of the responsibility for reproductive health and child-bearing on them, in ways that inevitably deter gender equality. With comments like Erickson’s bouncing around cyberspace, it’s easy to see why they had that impression.

Yeah, it’s not an “impression.” It’s called reality.

Religion Is Dead

That will be the upshot of today’s completely outrageous Hobby Lobby ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court has effectively killed religion.

I know, it looks the opposite, but what have I said here a gazillion, bajillion times, folks? When religion gets forced on people by government or corporations, religion always dies. People don’t want this shit foisted on them. As I’ve said a thousand times before, the surest way to kill off religious belief is to declare a “state religion.” The bigger religion’s role in the secular aspects of life, the more people run away from it.

And in this ruling SCOTUS said some corporations can impose the beliefs of some religions on some employees, effectively legalizing discrimination against women and certain religions. If you’re a company owned by Jehova’s Witnesses, sorry, you have to pay for blood transfusions. No out for Scientologists who object to psychiatry and psychiatric drugs. Christian Scientists who don’t believe in most healthcare at all still have to pony up. But if you’re a Christian fundiegelical who believes completely erroneously and incorrectly that IUDs cause abortions — even though they don’t! — you can refuse to offer a healthcare plan covering that form of birth control to your female employees. That’s what SCOTUS just ruled.

The debate wasn’t even really about the Hobby Lobby peoples’ religious beliefs, it was about their completely erroneous, counter-factual scientific beliefs cloaked in religion:

Hobby Lobby already covered 16 of the 20 methods of contraception mandated under the Affordable Care Act, but it didn’t cover Plan B One-Step, ella (another brand of emergency contraception) and two forms of intrauterine devices because of aforementioned ideologically driven and not medically based ideas about abortion.

“These medications are there to prevent or delay ovulation,” Dr. Petra Casey, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the Mayo Clinic, told the New York Times in a piece on the science behind emergency contraception. “They don’t act after fertilization.” As the Times noted, emergency contraception like Plan B, ella and the hormonal IUD do not work by preventing fertilized eggs from implanting in the womb. Instead, these methods of birth control delay ovulation 0r thicken cervical mucus to prevent sperm from reaching the egg, meaning that fertilization never even occurs. That said, when used as a form of emergency contraception, the copper IUD can interrupt implantation, but this still does not mean a pregnancy has occurred.

This ruling was stunningly ham-fisted on so many levels. In a nutshell, in “going narrow” SCOTUS picked a religion — the fundiegelical Christian kind — over the rights of female employees who may not be of that religion, and also over the rights of every other religion out there. This is going to have repercussions, people — and not good ones for the religious folks. It’s gonna get messy, and I think it’s gonna smack religious people on the ass so hard they won’t sit for a month. Stories like this one are going to ripple across the workplace in every state. It’s a ruling that basically legalized gender discrimination and religious discrimination. When it all shakes down it’s not going to be pretty for the people currently doing a happy dance.

In the meantime, folks calling for a Constitutional Convention to repeal corporate personhood just got a little more ammo.

[UPDATE]: ThinkProgress agrees with me.

[UPDATE] 2: Charlie Pierce at Esquire also agrees with me. SCOTUS just perpetrated an act of religious discrimination while professing to do the opposite. WTF is up with that, people?

Occupy Madison Avenue

Hey America, did you know there’s a culture war going on? Not the religious vs secular one we’ve always had, but a fun new one, the rich vs poor one? The takers vs makers one? The Occupy Wall Street vs Americans For Prosperity one? The “Me Generation” vs “Us Generation” one?

As an observer of the culture I find this new one far more interesting, relevant and, quite frankly, a far bigger deal than that other one. I know it’s a lot more fun for your Gannett fishwrap to write about Koran-burning pastors and fights over Muslim cemeteries in Rutherford County, and indeed these are important issues, I don’t mean to downplay them. But in terms of having a broad, lasting impact on American society, I think these religious wars over birth control and whether we are a Christian nation are really just sidebars.

This other culture war is the one which really defines us. It’s a battle of two beloved archetypes, pitting the “rugged individualist” against the “community organizer.” It’s a battle for the soul of America and American values. Do we value stuff? Or do we value each other? Are we all on our own? Or are we all in this together?

We’re not really having that national conversation right now, but it doesn’t mean the battle isn’t raging. Mitt Romney’s infamous “47 percent” comment and Elizabeth Warren’s “you didn’t build that” speech brought it to the forefront, but post-election we’re just sort of dancing around the topic instead of having a direct debate.

And I have to say, if you want to know what’s happening in a culture, look at its advertising. Have you noticed that all of a sudden we’re seeing mixed-race and same-sex families in TV ads now? I think this is great. When Madison Avenue recognizes that the “average American family” is now multi-racial and multi-oriented, it tells me the bigots have lost and the all-inclusives have won (I know that’s not a word, I just made it up, but I like it).

So now we have a new culture war raging, and I find it absolutely fascinating to see it played out in … wait for it … car commercials.

If you watched the winter Olympic games, you repeatedly saw Cadillac’s ad featuring Mr. 1%er, a self-satisfied douchebag bragging on American exceptionalism and showing off all his cool stuff. This truly useless idiot seems to think we’re going to go back to the moon despite the fact that we keep cutting NASA’s budget so we can afford tax cuts for wealthy assholes like him. What a buffoon. I suppose he’s Cadillac’s target market. If you missed it, here it is:

This ad irritated a lot of us liberals, and no doubt it was designed to do just that. And now Ford has answered that ad with its own, featuring an actual community do-gooder named Pasho Murray, founder of Detroit Dirt, which takes food waste and turns it into compost for urban gardens.

You can see Ford’s “parody” ad here:

I just find this so fascinating. I suppose someone else will come out with an ad telling us to ride bicycles or use public transit. Wait for it, in 5… 4… 3….

Something big is happening in American culture right now. I wonder, maybe we need to be a little more intentional about the conversation? Instead of letting advertising agencies have the conversation for us? Just a thought.

Kids Today, Sex Ed Edition

Once again, dear blog readers, I’ve neglected you. I’ve been meaning to write about this story since it first appeared in our Gannett fishwrap, but I’ve been way too swamped with other stuff. Since then Betsy at Pith and ThinkProgress have covered this, so hit those links if you want more info.

The bottom line is, some Fundiegelical conservative abstinence clowns somehow got approval to give a sex misinformation assembly at Nashville’s Hillsboro High, which happens to be the high school my kids would be attending had Mr. Beale and I not decided to stick a fork in Jesus’ eye and avoid breeding this lifetime. I know, how un-Christian of us.

The assembly was full of crackpot ideas, such as:

All medical textbooks say life begins at conception.

… and ….

Having sex with eight partners would be the equivalent of drinking a whole classroom’s spit…

… and ….

[…] “fetus” means the same thing as “baby” …

…. and ….

[…] a grim picture of the various types of abortion: dismembered fetuses, punctured uterine walls, bleeding for 8-9 weeks, death.

… and ….

As for adoption — never discourage it, she tells the class. Don’t even use the term “give up” the baby. If a girl says she’s pregnant, send her to the nurse, and she should start taking prenatal vitamins.

… and my absolute favorite:

If a girl becomes a single mom to a boy, she says: “Who’s going to do all those things that men like to do with men? Hunting, fishing, playing ball, all those things that teach them how to be a man and setting those boundaries?”

Got that fellas? So, if you don’t like to hunt, fish or play ball, you are not a man! You’re some kind of girly-man, sissified by your single mom. And Jesus hates you.

I’m trying to imagine how an assembly like this would have been greeted in my day. Back in the ’70s when I was in high school, these ladies would have left our classroom pulling spitwads and chewing gum from their hair, their model fetus baby reduced to shards and their Hope Center flyers transformed into origami 747s.

Of course, that was a more innocent age. Today kids record these assemblies on their cell phones and take it to the media. Bravo, unnamed student. My hat’s off to you.

I mean, I’m just trying to imagine what these kids thought when they heard this stuff about “who’s gonna teach your boy how to hunt and fish” and all. Did these ladies not think there might not be a few sons of single moms in the audience? What incredible idiots.

What’s really scary is that one of the presenters, Beth Cox, is a member of the Sumner County School Board. Cox is also on the board of directors for the organization which brought this nonsense to a Davidson County high school, Decisions, Choices and Options. Though the group claims everything they teach is “medical, fatual information,” the group has just one doctor on its board of directors: Dr. Bryan Bondurant, a veterinarian and failed conservative Republican candidate for Congress.

Hilarious. How did these Sumner County hayseeds get on the list of approved presenters in Metro Nashville schools in the first place? This stuff they’re selling isn’t medical, factual information! It’s an ideologically-driven misinformation campaign. In case y’all missed it, you lost the culture wars. Now fuck off.

My mom went to Catholic boarding school back in the 1940s. This is exactly the kind of “sex ed” kids of her generation were given. She told me the Jesuits taught that at the condom factory, one out of every 10 condoms is given a pin-prick. I asked her, “Did anyone ask the priests why a condom factory would do that?” No, she said. It didn’t occur to them.

That really was a more innocent age, when teenagers were a bit more gullible — though no less inclined to engage in sexual exploration. Kids today are a little savvier. And I’m glad at least one had the forethought to blow the lid off this ridiculous excuse for “education.” Now, let’s yank these clowns off the “approved” list for Nashville’s public schools. Because at the very least, our kids deserve factual information, not religious views and pseudo-science.

“Karl? Who’s Karl?”

God, when will Karl Rove just fucking go away?

“We’re so sorry,” said Nancy. “We’re so sorry. But we just have to reverse course.” […]

Nancy’s reply stunned me. “Karen, I’ve talked to a lot of people. And even Karl says we have to backtrack. There’s just no other way.”

“Karl? Who’s Karl?”

She looked at me strangely as if I should know exactly who she was talking about. She said, “Karl Rove!”

“Nancy” would be Susan G. Komen for the Cure founder and CEO Nancy Brinker; “Karen” is Komen’s former senior vice president for public policy.

The quote is from Karen Handel’s forthcoming book “Planned Bullyhood,” where she portrays Planned Parenthood as an all-powerful group of thugs and reveals such juicy tidbits as angry phone calls to Brinker from Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Oh, boo fucking hoo. I don’t know if this story is true or not but if it is, Wasserman Schultz gets my thanks. Because Wasserman Schultz is a breast cancer survivor. So yeah, she has a personal interest making sure women have access to breast cancer screenings, even at places like Planned Parenthood. I would’ve made some pissed off phone calls to Nancy Brinker if I had her direct line, too.

But I’m getting waaay off topic here. No, there’s a lot astonishing here but we can start with the degree to which the Komen organization was (is?) so closely connected to Republican Party insiders and operatives. To the point where they back off a policy because “even Karl said so.”

I mean, I had no idea. I wonder if any of Komen’s corporate sponsors knew they were getting involved with a partisan political organization disguised by breast cancer advocacy?

What’s really amusing is seeing the reaction from the anti-choice crowd. Shocked — shocked! — to discover they have been useful idiots for the Republican Party, trotted out when politically expedient and told to shut up when they start hurting the party’s image.

Suckers.

Remembrance Of Hissy Fits Past

Remember this “outrage” from the 2004 campaign?

Presidential candidate John Kerry (search) launched into damage control Thursday afternoon after angering Vice President Cheney (search) and his family and alienating some voters by mentioning that Cheney’s daughter, Mary, is gay.

“I love my daughters. They love their daughter. I was trying to say something positive about the way strong families deal with this issue,” Kerry said in a statement released from the campaign trail in Las Vegas. Kerry was there to speak to the AARP, the nation’s largest organization for seniors. First lady Laura Bush had addressed the crowd earlier.

But the remarks may have come too late for the vice president and second lady Lynne Cheney (search). Cheney told supporters at a rally in Fort Myers, Fla., that the Massachusetts senator stepped over the line.

“You saw a man who will do and say anything to get elected, and I am not just speaking as a father here, although I am a pretty angry father,” Cheney said.

[…]

But in a post-debate appearance Wednesday night, Lynne Cheney could no longer hold her silence about the repeated mention of her daughter’s sexuality.

“Now, you know, I did have a chance to assess John Kerry once more and now the only thing I could conclude: This is not a good man,” she told a crowd of 800 debate-watchers in a Pittsburgh suburb. “Of course, I am speaking as a mom, and a pretty indignant mom. This is not a good man. What a cheap and tawdry political trick.”

Yes, how dare he mention Mary Cheney’s orientation, when she was a) out, b) an official in the Bush Administration, and c) the issue of marriage equality was under debate across the country. The weirdest thing about that whole episode from the 2004 campaign is that while the Cheneys made quite a good show of being extraordinarily pissed off, they never explained why they were angry. Nor did anyone in the lapdog media ever ask why they were angry. Apparently just mention Mary Cheney’s name and the word “lesbian” in the same sentence and their heads pop. Crazy.

Was that not the strangest thing ever? I remember a week of discussion about this, and it was always on the Republican side of the argument: how dare he. How could he. The nerve! I still don’t get how they get away with this stuff, those conservatives on the right who are both pro-and anti- everything, depending on which audience they’re speaking to. They are like freaking shape-shifters, morphing into whatever ideological mold is politically convenient at the time. And the media just laps it all up.

It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.

Anyway, with that in mind, I hesitate to mention that Mary Cheney married her longtime partner Heather Poe on Friday. I’d say mazel tov but I don’t want Dick and Lynne Cheney coming after me. How dare I!