Pat Robertson believes that gays will soon die out because they cannot reproduce. Not sure what is more troubling, his understanding of sexuality or of history.

Courtesy of New Now Next:  

The 700 Club televangelist took a call recently from woman complaining that her church forbids dating or marriage—that even showing interest in the opposite sex is a “sin.” 

Robertson told the woman to “run” from her church before everyone dies out. 

“You know, those who are homosexual will die out because they don’t reproduce. You have to have heterosexual sex to reproduce,” he opined. “Same thing with that church— it’s doomed, it’s going to die out because it’s the most nonsensical thing I’ve heard in a long time.”

While I agree with Robertson that this woman needs to leave her church immediately (Actually leaving ALL churches might not be a bad plan), his contention that homosexuality will die out because they cannot produce offspring together is truly ignorant.

As just about everybody EXCEPT Pat Robertson already knows straight parents produce gay children and have been doing so since the beginning of time.

In fact if Robertson were to open a book that does not begin with the words "In the beginning.." he might realize that teh gays have existed well before the establishment of Christianity, Judaism, or even monotheism.

In fact they are the one constant that ties ALL societies, ethnicities, and past civilizations together.

Suggesting that gay folks will soon die out is like suggesting that Pat Robertson will soon start saying things that are not incredibly stupid.

Not gonna happen.

Christian women's group opposes building of women's history museum. Wait, what?

"Christian women's group opposes building of women's history museum." Yep you read that right.

Here is the story: 

The Christian group Concerned Women for America (CWA) has been trying to stop the construction of the National Women’s History Museum in Washington D.C. 

The House approved the museum in a 383-33 vote earlier this year, but a similar bill has been blocked in the Senate by Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), noted the New York Daily News. 

“Whose view of history is this going to be?” Penny Nance, CEO of CWA, told The Daily Caller earlier this year. 
 

Concerned Women of America CEO Penny Nance.

Nance claimed that the museum would espouse pro-choice, anti-marriage and anti-family positions.

Incredibly enough the museum sponsors even offered Nance a chance to participate in the museum's direction. Guess how that went:  

However, conservative Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), who sponsored the museum bill in the House, denied Nance's claims were true and even offered Nance a seat on the museum commission. 

Nance called the offer an "exercise in futility and frustration" because it wasn't the chairman position. 

“I am happy to either serve or find someone else to serve as chairman,” stated Nance.

Yes why wouldn't you put a person, who clearly has no concept of the struggles that women have undertaken to provide her the opportunity to participate in the the founding of a museum in their honor, the chairmanship?

Now you might find the idea of a women's group, ANY women's group, opposed to the building of a museum honoring women to be almost impossible to rationalize.

But that is because you do not yet realize that Concerned Women for America is not REALLY so much a women's group as it is a conservative group promoting Christianity, carefully hidden behind women's skirts. 

In fact on their list of top issues are :

Sanctity of Life
Defense of Family
Religious Liberty
National Soveregnty
And of course Defense of Israel.

Somehow I do not think that these issues were among the top priorities for the women who fought for the right to vote, or own property, or hold elected office in this country.

Here is CWA's Mission Statement:  

The mission of CWA is to protect and promote Biblical values among all citizens — first through prayer, then education, and finally by influencing our society — thereby reversing the decline in moral values in our nation.

Oh yeah, SO pro-women don't you think?

In fact it seems to me that this is really just the same anti-women, Christian misogynistic group, railing against the feminists, that we have seen for years now.

Only this one wears lipstick and nail polish. 

Class...class...class...SHUT UP! Thank you. Now listen as Rick Santorum educates you on the fact that the separation of church and state is a communist idea, not an American one.

Courtesy of Right Wing Watch:  

In a conference call with members of right-wing pastor E.W. Jackson’s STAND America that was posted online today, former senator Rick Santorum disputed the existence of the separation of church and state in the U.S. Constitution, dismissing it as a Communist idea that has no place in America. 

A listener on the call told Santorum that “a number of the things that the far left, a.k.a. the Democrat [sic] Party, and the president is pushing for and accomplishing actually accomplishes a number of the tenets of ‘The Communist Manifesto,’ including the amnesty, the elevation of pornography, homosexuality, gay marriage, voter fraud, open borders, mass self-importation of illegal immigrants and things of that nature.” The likely presidential candidate replied that “the words ‘separation of church and state’ is not in the U.S. Constitution, but it was in the constitution of the former Soviet Union. That’s where it very, very comfortably sat, not in ours.” 

Wow! And here I thought there were limits to how Christian revisionists could rewrite American history.

Of course as Right Wing Watch points out Thomas Jefferson himself referred to the separation of church and state in an 1802 letter:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

The intention of the founding fathers seems fairly clear. That is unless you are Rick Santorum of course, and you refuse to accept facts which will not support your hypothesis. Or your faith.

Here's a little perspective on the whole undocumented immigrant debate.

Of course perhaps it's just that the current descendants of the immigrants pictured above are afraid that the same thing will happen to them that happened to the Americans who offered food and friendship instead of imprisonment and aggression.

Misogynistic quotes from Christian leaders throughout the ages.

Courtesy of Salon:

In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die… Woman, you are the gate to hell. —Tertullian, the “father of Latin Christianity” (c160-225) 

Woman is a temple built over a sewer. —Tertullian 

The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes. —Martin Luther, Reformer (1483-1546) 

Even as the church must fear Christ Jesus, so must the wives also fear their husbands. And this inward fear must be shewed by an outward meekness and lowliness in her speeches and carriage to her husband….For if there be not fear and reverence in the inferior, there can be no sound nor constant honor yielded to the superior. —John Dod, A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandements, Puritan guidebook first published in 1603 

The second duty of the wife is constant obedience and subjection. —John Dod 

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. —Pat Robertson, Southern Baptist leader (1930–) 

The Holiness of God is not evidenced in women when they are brash, brassy, boisterous, brazen, head-strong, strong-willed, loud-mouthed, overly-talkative, having to have the last word, challenging, controlling, manipulative, critical, conceited, arrogant, aggressive, assertive, strident, interruptive, undisciplined, insubordinate, disruptive, dominating, domineering, or clamoring for power. Rather, women accept God’s holy order and character by being humbly and unobtrusively respectful and receptive in functional subordination to God, church leadership, and husbands. —James Fowler, Women in the Church, 1999. 

Women will be saved by going back to that role that God has chosen for them. Ladies, if the hair on the back of your neck stands up it is because you are fighting your role in the scripture. —Mark Driscoll, founder of Mars Hill nondenominational mega-church franchise. (1970-)

Salon lists twenty of these quotes in all, each one incredibly insulting and degrading towards women.

The Christian religion was never created to support women. It was created to subjugate them, render them mute, and to bend them to the will of man, using the ultimate male figure to frighten them into subservience. 

Which of course brings up the question which vexes me still. I understand why women of years past might have simply accepted their circumstances, since they had not way out of them at the time, but with all  that we know today, and the voice that women have found for themselves, why do so many continue to self identify as Christians?

Kirk Cameron wants people to ignore history and facts and accept that Christmas, and all of its traditions, are Christian. Oh and he wants you to pay good money to watch his movie about that too.

Courtesy of The Christian Post:  

Kirk Cameron is introducing a new way of thinking about Christmas and its many traditions this year with the film "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas," in theaters on Friday. 

In his first release since "Unstoppable," Cameron aims to "put the Christ back in Christmas" this holiday season by attempting to debunk disparaging theories surrounding Christmastime. Furthermore, the actor shares his own ideas on where Christmas traditions originated, including loose Biblical interpretations of the Christmas tree and the nativity scene. It is the actor's hope that Christians are inspired to protect and preserve customary Christmas activities after watching "Saving Christmas." 

The "Growing Pains" star dismisses theories that Christmas is derived in the pagan celebration of Winter Solstice in "Saving Christmas," offering viewers a Biblical reference to items such as the Christmas tree instead. Furthermore, the film reveals Cameron's take on Santa Claus, the three wisemen, and why Christmas is celebrated on Dec. 25 each year. 

"We don't know this stuff, we kinda drink the Kool-Aid and believe pagans when they tell us they have ownership of these things," Cameron explained to CP.

Clearly Cameron is from the camp that believes that if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. Which by the way, is kind of like Christianity itself. 

The facts are that we do indeed "know this stuff," and the origins of most of the pagan origins of Christmas traditions are well documented.

Speaking of history and facts Cameron might be interested to know that the Puritans who founded this country roundly rejected Christmas and outlawed its celebration.

And they were well aware of its origins as well:

When the Puritans rebelled against King Charles I, inciting the English Revolution, the popular celebration of Christmas was on their hit list. Victorious against the king, in 1647, the Puritan government actually canceled Christmas. Not only were traditional expressions of merriment strictly forbidden, but shops were also ordered to stay open, churches were shut down and ministers arrested for preaching on Christmas Day. 

The Puritans who came to America naturally shared these sentiments. As the Massachusetts minister Increase Mather explained in 1687, Christmas was observed on Dec. 25 not because “Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian” ones. So naturally, official suppression of Christmas was foundational to the godly colonies in New England.

Actually Cameron's efforts are part of a coordinated effort by Christians to take ownership of the holiday,  which of course makes it less accessible for those of us who do not embrace their faith.

And that is too bad, because Christmas is a great holiday for ALL Americans, and if Cameron, and his fellow Christians, really love it so much they should help to make it something that we all could enjoy without using it to cram their religion down everybody's throats.

By the way once you watch the trailer for this crappy little film it becomes quite apparent that it will not be changing ANYBODY'S mind about the true origins of the holiday.

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.

You would think that after being on the wrong side of history in the case slavery, women's right to vote, rock and roll, and Obamacare that conservatives would begin to tire of being run over by the wheels of progress.

But you know what they say, if conservatives paid attention to facts, they would be liberals.

Attempts by conservative school board members in Colorado to teach revisionist history to AP students is turning angry Republicans into Democrats.

Courtesy of HuffPo:  

"For the first time in my life, I will probably vote a straight Democratic ticket." 

That realization came as something of a surprise to non-practicing attorney Wendy McCord, who has always thought of herself as a Republican. The mother of two children in Jefferson County's public school system, McCord told The Huffington Post that she has been politically transformed by the actions of the new conservative majority on the county school board, which presides over the state's second-largest school district. 

Here in Jefferson County, a bellwether battleground that is almost evenly split between Republicans, Democrats and independents, a local educational controversy is resonating with county voters who otherwise might not have been engaged in this year's elections. Frustrated Republicans like McCord could be the deciding votes in Colorado's gubernatorial race, in which Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) faces a strong challenge from former Rep. Bob Beauprez (R), as well as its Senate race, in which Democratic Sen. Mark Udall is in danger of being unseated by Republican challenger Rep. Cory Gardner. 

The battle began last November, when three conservative candidates for county school board swept into office, establishing a majority on the five-person board. The newly-elected board members hired their own attorney and proceeded to clash with teachers and parents over issues such as pay, charter schools and kindergarten expansion. The move that garnered the most national attention, however, was a proposal for a new Advanced Placement U.S. history curriculum that would de-emphasize civil disobedience and disorder while emphasizing patriotism, citizenship and "respect for authority." To protest the proposal, thousands of students left their classrooms and held demonstrations in solidarity with their teachers, who called in sick.

I have already covered this Colorado debacle both here and here.

At the time of those two posts I was frustrated that conservatives were once again trying to hijack public education, and also encouraged by the fact that the teachers and students were standing up to them.

But now it looks like the whole thing may be backfiring in a big way. Which of course is good for everyone.

Google History and Sources of Revenue

We may be familiar with Google. The search engine allows us to find relevant information and fast on the internet. Both have made Google's search engine in the world's most widely used (53.6%), followed by Yahoo (19.9%), and MSN (12.9%). 

In this post I would like to invite you to know better the history of Google in terms of establishment and the main source of revenue. Google history

Google's history began in January 1996. It was Larry Page and Sergey Brin (both PhD students at Stanford University, USA) conducted a study to create a new search engine that provides better search results (relevant) for its users. They hypothesize that relevant search results will be generated when a search engine that can analyze the relationship between websites. They finally produced a new search engine called BackRub. The name is taken because this search engine to analyze the backlinks of the website.