The Truth is worse than the Joke
There was an article floating around the internet yesterday that got a lot of people pissed off. If it had been true, I would have been right there with them.
Thing is, it wasn’t true.
The original article appeared on The Daily Bleach, which is a parody site. I can’t link directly to the article right now because the entire site appears to be down but here’s what it said:
A Southern Carolina couple have made national news by being the first parents to put their child up for adoption due to their sexuality. Usually parents give up their children because they can’t raise them due to finances or because they are young and don’t have the mental ability to bring up a child. Kids are also usually given up for adoption at a young age, but April Chadwell is barely 16 years old and has been listed as legally adoptable by the state of Southern Carolina. Mrs. Chadwell released a statement saying “It was a tough choice to give up our daughter to the state, but we don’t know how to handle someone who decides to live a lifestyle that we do not agree with”. The Chadwells said they had help from their local church, who prayed for weeks seeking guidance for the couple and came to the conclusion that it would be best to let the child go in hopes of being adopted by a gay friendly family.
There were no links to provide a source. Just the text.
I was initially unaware that it was a parody site, but the article set off alarm bells right away. No links to a longer article. No sources quoted at all. It just looks pretty flimsy.
Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 4/5
New York’s Cardinal Dolan wants to Improve the Catholic Church’s Message about Gay Marriage
Oh that’s great Cardinal! I’m glad to see that a high-ranking member of the Catholic Church finally realizes that the Church has no right to make moral judgements for those individuals who aren’t Catholic and you’d stay out of the political arena and…wait a minute.
No. That’s not what he thinks at all. He wants gay people to know that sex is only OK if you are trying to produce offspring so while it is totally OK to be gay, you can’t actually have sex or be married or anything like that. Gay people are totally entitled to friendship, though.
He also wants gay people to know that the Catholic Church is not anti “anybody.” They don’t hate gay people. They just want to make sure that gay people know they aren’t permitted to sexual fulfillment the way straight people are.
I came up with a new message! What do you guys think?
So basically, the difference between gay guys having male friends who are gay and me having male friends who are gay is a lifetime of unresolved sexual tension? I bring this up an awful lot but you know what? If that is really what god wants for gay people, god is a dick.
How about you work on improving that message, Cardinal?
Shit that Pissed me Off this Week – 3/29
Woman Complains about Sexist Behavior at a Convention and she gets Harassed and Fired
I just don’t get it, really. A couple of guys were making sexist jokes while sitting in the audience for a panel about women coders and an audience member thought they were in the wrong. Yeah. I agree.
She asked the conference organizers to tell them to stop. They were asked to stop and they did.
Then all hell breaks loose because one of the guys loses his job.
Look, I don’t think the guy should have lost his job for that but I wonder if it was really just for that? Isn’t it possible he was shitty at his job already? Even he was “just” fired for sexual harassment (oh the humanity), the logical response should not be for other people on the internet to attack the woman’s place of work and get her fired.
Hey guys! Let’s use our computers to teach this uppity bitch that she shouldn’t complain when we call her an uppity bitch!
That’s the sort thing dicks do.
Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of dicks on the internet.
Update: Clarifications in the comments below. And in this article. She did send a tweet to the conference organizers, not a public one (at least according to what I read). I question any firings happening and the harrassment is completely unacceptable.
Mea culpa on this one, though. I usually research the articles better before I comment on them. I didn’t look into this one deeply enough. If I had, I would still have commented on it but been more clear about all of the details.
The results of this situation – both firings – look to be classic overreactions by both companies and that still pisses me off.
Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 3/22
MegaChurch Pastor Told his Teenaged Girlfriend That Jesus Wanted them to be Together
Jack Schaap has pled guilty to taking a minor across state lines for the purpose of having sex. He’s not the first middle-aged guy who has shacked up with a teenager who looked up to him.
But I’m sure he’s been preaching about the abomination of homosexuality and possibly fornication and then he seems powerless to control his own lust. He even went so far as to tell his young lover that Jesus wanted them to be together.
Go ahead and do her, buddy! I’m behind you 100%! You don’t mind if I watch, do you?
I’m sure he’ll blame his behavior on the devil rather than himself. What will never occur to him (or his flock) is to question how a man so in tune with God could succumb to the same base lusts he condemns in other people. I’m sure he prayed to god for the strength to stop cheating on his wife with a child. Why didn’t god stop him? Why did he instead decide that god wanted him to do it?
It’s like the god he believed in didn’t really exist.
Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 3/15
I get frustrated when science is doing something cool – in this case sampling water from a lake buried under four kilometers of ice to see if there is life there – and the results are less than thrilling.
I mean, it should be enough that they drilled through four kilometers of ice and took a sample of the lake water to begin with. And I admit, that is pretty fucking cool.
I was really hoping they would find something else there. Maybe they still will but for right now, it looks like the only thing they discovered was water.
Admit it. It would have been way cooler if they’d found one of these!
I don’t want to sound bitter but I’ve seen water before.
*Note: It isn’t over yet. There is a lot more scientific work to be done. For now, though, there are no ice monsters in Antarctica. Dammit.
Shit that Pissed me off this Week – 2/15
Georgia Lawmaker Wants to Make it Illegal to make Fun of People (Specifically Him) on the Internet
Whether or not making mean-spirited jokes about people is wrong, it isn’t illegal. And it shouldn’t be.
Because honestly, who’s to judge which statements are worth fining and which are not?
Right. A Judge. OK. I knew that.
Like this guy.
You know, the thing that bugs me about people who choose to engage in public service is how surprised some of them are when people make fun of them. Sometimes they deserve it. Sometimes they don’t.
In a country as ideologically divided as we are, however, it is going to happen. Constantly.
You have two choices. You can grow thicker skin or you can introduce laws designed to ensure people will make even more fun of you.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why so many people do the latter.
Rope a Pope
Looks like the eighth dwarf
Well, it happened. An event that hasn’t taken place for over five hundred years happened and it has had an immediate impact on millions of people. Most of them journalists.
Pope Benedict the somethingth (I don’t know – it’s more than ten) has abdicated his position. He’s stepping down. For almost every pope that preceded him, the papacy was a death sentence. They literally worked themselves to death. Not this pope, though. He’d like some time to enjoy his final years in a way that is just a little less infallible.
Lots of pressure goes with infallibility, I would imagine. Many popes before Benedict the VIIVXth have felt that pressure and they never had the guts to just give it up. They were probably too attached to the colorful robes that were definitely NOT GAY and the golden jewelry that was also NOT GAY and living in the one country in the world almost entirely populated by men, who are all NOT GAY.
Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 2/8
Catholic Girls Take a no Profanity pledge but Catholic Boys Don’t
Apparently use of profanity is “unladylike” but it is totally “manlike.”
I can actually support the idea of using more civil language in school but not because a civil tongue is a function of gender identity. I’m (obviously) not opposed to swearing but keeping foul language out of discourse in school can, I think, make it easier to learn.
In this case, though, what the young ladies are learning is that they are expected to be proper young ladies while the boys can be vulgar and nasty and, basically, act like assholes. That’s OK, you see, because they are boys.
Can the girls do this or is it also unladylike?
Well I cry bullshit (I can say that because I’m a guy). If you want civil discourse in school, you can’t exclude the boys from the conversation. When you do, you are making it very clear that the young men at that school are simultaneously better than the young women because they can say whatever they want and worse because they can’t be counted on to control themselves.
In other words, swear up a fucking storm, guys! God says it’s OK!!!!
Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 2/1
Women are Allowed to Serve in Combat So Some Men Make Douchetastic Comments
I really have to stay away from Man boobz because it just makes me want to apologize to every woman I meet for the fact that some guys are such insufferable pricks.
In the wake of a historic decision to allow women to serve combat duty, the folks over at A Voice For Men (no link provided because Fuck them) figure that it only works if women die as often as men. It’s only fair, apparently, that we talk about the casualty rate of women and apparently it isn’t “fair” until enough women are killed or wounded in combat.
They also seriously say men will face a higher risk of being killed in combat because they had to fetch a tampon for a female compatriot.
THIS could kill more soldiers than land mines!!!!
What?
Fuck you! You don’t think women in combat can be responsible for their own bodies? They have been serving on combat missions for years now and I haven’t heard of any male soldiers who have died in the line of tampon duty.
You know why? Because women can take care of themselves!
I realize some guys are pissed when they learn the unfortunate truth that women are capable of doing stuff for themselves. The rest of us (the rational people) realize that they have no right to be pissed at women because they are assholes.
Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 1/18
Pat Robertson Thinks Marriages Wouldn’t fail if Women Weren’t So Ugly
A 17-year-old boy notices that his father is neglecting his mother so what does Robertson do? He suggests that the problem isn’t really his dad but the fact that his mother is too “hard nosed.”
Robertson has been a misogynistic douche for many a year and there are times where I honestly wish god existed just so Robertson would get his ass reamed when he finally kicks the bucket. Maybe Robertson is right and I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure Yahweh is going to have some choice words for that smug douchebag.
And another thing – my name is ZEUS! Is that so fucking hard to remember?
Robertson makes the common error of thinking that if there is anything wrong in a relationship, it is the woman’s fault. I assume he bases this assumption on the fact that he’s incapable of viewing women as fellow members of the human race. I don’t know, maybe he’s still pissed about the rib.
Get over it, man. God ain’t going to give it back.
