Bishops to oppose adoption by gays

The four Roman Catholic bishops of Massachusetts plan to seek permission from the state to exclude gay couples as adoptive parents [...]. The decision follows a three-month study of the theological and practical impact of having Catholic Charities of Boston, the Boston Archdiocese’s social service arm, place children with gay couples, given the Vatican’s teaching that describes such adoptions are ”gravely immoral.” [...] If the bishops obtain an exemption, they could continue to handle adoptions while excluding gay or lesbian applicants from consideration. However, if they do not win an exemption, they either have to allow gay adoptions to continue or risk having their adoption license pulled and being barred from adoption work in the state altogether. [...] Its officials are also aware that many gay and lesbian parents have filled a much-needed role in taking in foster children, but that such placements directly conflict with Vatican pronouncements against homosexuals raising children. State authorities say adoption agencies cannot discriminate, however. Any agency in Massachusetts that handles adoptions must obtain a state license, which prohibits them from turning down prospective parents based on sexual orientation, religion, and race, among other factors [...]. If an agency knowingly discriminates, it could be stripped of its license to broker all adoptions. ”You can’t have a discrimination policy,” Papanikolaou said. ”It’s a condition of their license.”

This is so dysfunctional.

Okay, so, like, they’ve been using these people already, and, one can assume (since it’s not in the story either way, and since they keep using them) that using these people hasn’t been all that bad for the kids. The kids, it seems (at least as much as anywhere else), seem to come out of the “same-sex-household-experience” just fine, give or take the normal amount of damage that may or may not occur in the context of foster care. (One could guess that the state would have stopped such adoptions otherwise.) But the actual treatment of the kids obviously wasn’t the target of the three-month study — which instead focused on the “theological and practical impact” of Catholic Charities.

Translation: “This really isn’t about the kids, but about our image through our charities. We keep using gays, and the kids seem fine — but at the same time we’re against gays (damn those secularists who make that anti-discrimination law!). So, either we need to stop letting them take the kids, or, man, we’re gonna look really fucking stupid in our anti-gay stance.”

Too late.

Mudslide wipes out Philippine village; 23 confirmed dead, 1,500 missing

MANILA, Philippines (AP) – A rain-soaked mountainside disintegrated into a torrent of mud, swallowing hundreds of houses and an elementary school in the eastern Philippines on Friday. Officials said 23 people were confirmed dead, but 1,500 were missing and there were fears the death toll might soar. [...] Education officials said 200 students, six teachers and the principal were believed to have been there. Senator Richard Gordon, head of the Philippine Red Cross, issued the casualty estimates and made an international appeal for aid. The provincial governor asked for people to dig by hand, saying the mud was too soft for heavy equipment. [...] “Let us all pray for those who perished and were affected by this tragedy,” President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said in a statement.

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Note from Sean: this story is in the process of unravelling (note that there are no legitimate news sources, and see some of the comments connected to this post). Thought I’d post this little editorial note, since some people are coming in, seeing this, not reading the comments, and believing the rumor. It’s looking like the original source for this was Islamic propaganda. Marcus, that “PWNED” pic is one of my all-time faves.

What is going on over in Norway? I picked up a whiff of this on Fark and thought it had to be a joke until I was able to find it at another outlet. It appears a couple of Islamic news sources have picked up this story very quickly, but apparently NORWAY HAS CRIMINALIZED BLASPHEMY. What. The. Fuck.

Personally, I think it may be a PR move, considering how quickly the news made it to ISLAMIC news tickers, but unfortunately prima facie appears to be an attempted “thought coup” by religious representatives within the Norwegian government.

Just to remind our poor Norwegian atheists friends of how much we care for free speech and support them, let me offer a slice of surrogate blasphemy:

It appears that using “sugar” has made Norway just a little less free.

For those of you who don’t know about RSS (those who do, feel free to ignore), it is a great way to keep up with activity on your favorite web sites.

In the lower right column of GifS you will see two links under the “Feeds” section, one titled “RSS2 Newsfeed” and the other titled “Comments as RSS2 Feed.”

The basic concept behind RSS (some call it “Really Simple Syndication”) is that the web comes to you. When you open an RSS newsreader, the feeds you have subscribed to get updated and you can see what is new on your favorite sites, along with brief exerpts from each new post. Here at GifS, this is especially handy for the comments feed, since comments continue to roll in for some discussions weeks, even months, after the original thread was started — and they are buried underneath the blog entries…

Now who would wanna miss one minute of the excitement in any of our wonderful threads? With RSS, all comments, in all threads, show up in your reader, and you can just pick and choose among the ones you want to read. Clicking on the links from the reader will take you back to GifS, where you can bitch some more in response.

Nifty, huh? In the case of GifS, it’s like having blasphemy delivered to your doorstep.

That said, here is a little info on RSS from NPR’s site. They also have a list of readers in the right column of that page.

For those who want to explore deeper, here is some more from About.com.

Happy RSSing!

Okay, you f-ing morons… Do I have to retract my earlier post from last night?

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Police used tear gas to drive out students who stormed into Islamabad’s diplomatic enclave on Tuesday and protesters attacked Western businesses in Pakistan’s most violent reaction yet to cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

Demonstrators smashed windows of cars and a branch of British bank Standard Chartered and shouted “Death to Denmark” and “Expel European ambassadors.

Yup, expel the embassies of the few governments that have tried to help you over the last half-century. You know, the folks that are always wearing the blue helmets in U.N. peacekeeping missions, the folks that were feeding 250,00 people in Chechnya until they were recently expelled. I could give a fuck about colonial history at this point, and you should too. Who is helping you now? Not your own corrupt governments, that’s for damned sure.

See my link from the previous post mentioned above. Why don’t people get this upset when their own governments fuck them over?

And for those of us who are absolutists about free speech:

… Solana arrived in Egypt from Saudi Arabia where he held talks with the head of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The OIC is lobbying for the United Nations to include language against blasphemy in the tenets of a new human rights body.

((BLASPHEMY??? IN A SECULAR CHARTER???))

“I cannot be very precise, but we are working on some ideas that maybe it is possible to get through,” Solana said, when asked about such proposals.

This is disturbing.

And:

Finnish police said on Tuesday they would investigate whether an anti-immigration group had committed a crime in publishing the Danish cartoons on its Web site.

Remember, despite being at the center of this controversy, thanks to WWII, most Europeans don’t believe in absolute free speech, because that would include unfettered hate speech that reminds them too vividly of Nazism.

It just seems to me that the West is being way too conciliatory. When are our bleeding hearts going to stop taking this shit from people who encourage children to carry signs that say “If a person insults a prophet, slay him”? Nice that the Brits respect that kid’s parents rights to express such an opinion on streets of London. Does it occur to them that those same people certainly aren’t worrying about their rights to free speech?

I’m not saying cut off diplomatic relations or anything. But stop caving in to their radical demands. It’s like you are negotiating with terrorists, which is supposed to be a no-no, because it just encourages more terrorism.

When is this stupidity going to end?

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Baby-Killing Mom Pleads Not Guilty

(AP) A woman accused of killing her 10-month-old daughter by cutting off the baby’s arms with a kitchen knife went on trial Monday after pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. Police found Dena Schlosser, 37, covered in blood in her kitchen, still holding a knife and listening to a church hymn.

Isn’t it so nice that God makes us nuts? What a loving being…

UPDATE:

Hang on, folks; things get better:

They have also faulted Schlosser’s husband, John Schlosser, and the family’s devotion to an unconventional church for exacerbating her illness and discouraging medical treatment.

“I do not believe that any mental illness exists other than demons, and no medication can straighten it out, other than the power of God,” Doyle Davidson, their church’s 73-year-old pastor testified Wednesday. The Schlosser family attended the Water of Life Church several times a week.

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Okay – it’s *$%^#@ Monday, I’ve already locked my keys in my car and forgotten my lunch. And my local newspaper’s opinion section is full of letter from IDiots showing an astonishing lack of sense and study. Enough.

I am sick to death of talking with/about theists and their violent, hatefilled childish delusions. It’s a never ending merry-go-round ride that only serves to remind me of how nice it is to have a brain not clouded by blind faith.

And, I’ve watched Fight Club 9 times in the last few days. The movie speaks to me – not only because of the unequalled beauty of both leads, but because of the deliciously atheistic message contained therein. But, that’s not what this post is about.

In Fight Club, Tyler Durden outlines his verison of Utopia:

In the world I see – you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.

So, me hearties- what’s your version of utopia? Mine, admittedly, would not be much different from Durden’s. (FYI – just saying a world without religion doesn’t count.) Go crazy – be creative. Let’s cheer ourselves up with cold comfort the way theists do.