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?
Alphabetical Movie – The Living Daylights
What a difference twenty years makes.
The Living Daylights was made in 1987 and while it doesn’t have the best of Bond villains, I think it is a solid film in the franchise. I’ve already defended Timothy Dalton as Bond so I won’t bother to do that again.
Watching the film now, what I’m struck by is the depiction of the Mujahideen as heroes and freedom fighters.
I’m not making any value judgements on whether or not that is right. Rather, I’m thinking that to a post 9/11 audience, that depiction might not make any sense. I can think of a few reasons why.
Alphabetical Movie – Live and Let Die
The cliché that a Bond villain can’t just fucking kill James Bond is rarely more evident than in Live & Let Die. Bond is constantly surrounded by bad guys with guns and yet not a one of them seems capable of pulling the trigger.
When Bond gets home at the end of this one, I really feel that he’s got to consider himself lucky that the bad guys he faces are so fucking stupid.
Let’s look at a few examples, shall we?
Geeks Without God Talks About Conventions!
This week, we brought our friend Matt Savelkoul back to the podcast so we could talk about conventions and atheism. We are appearing at the Skep-Tech conference this weekend so the episode works as sort of a set-up for that appearance. Actually, we spend most of the podcast talking about CONvergence because that is the convention all of us know the best. Given the breadth of the topic, it’s pretty amazing that we managed to keep the podcast under one hour.
Matt also gets to ask us five questions because he’s been on the podcast before. I gotta say that I love having return guests because as much as I enjoy our five questions, I enjoy the change up when someone gets to ask their own questions because it’s different every time. I also like spending time talking about what I like. That’s why I’m co-hosting a podcast, I expect.
One final bonus, if you listen to the podcast, you can find out how to win a free copy of Atheist Voices of Minnesota! That’s cool, right?
Alphabetical Movie – Little Shop of Horrors
When I was seventeen, my family took a trip to Europe for summer vacation. We spent a week in France, a week in Germany, a few days in Amsterdam and a week in England. Mostly London.
At the time, I was about to go to college as a theatre major and all I wanted to do in London was go see plays. My parents wanted to go to all sorts of historical buildings and stuff and I resented it at the time. One play a day hardly seemed fair. Who gave a crap about the Tower of London?
The Tower of London, by the way, was pretty cool. I regret it took me several years to realize that.
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.
Alphabetical Movie – The Little Mermaid
I have no idea if anyone else talks about Disney animated films the way we do at my house. We typically refer to The Little Mermaid as the beginning of the second Golden age of Disney.
The first Golden age, for reference, is the era of Fantasia, Pinocchio, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and so on. That era arguably ended with The Jungle Book.
There are certainly bad movies during that period but overall, Disney was producing good to great work for much of that time period.
Then you have an era where they produced stuff like The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron and Oliver and Company. Ugh.
Even the decent films from that era like The Rescuers and The Great Mouse Detective don’t compare to the films of that first Golden Age. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is the only exception.
Alphabetical Movie – The Lion King
I’ve often stated that the worst category in the Academy Awards is best song because the people voting for the award don’t know the slightest thing about music. The Lion King is the perfect example of my thesis.
Three different songs from the film were nominated for an Oscar. One was “Circle of Life,” which is one of the best songs written for film ever. It is so good, and the animation that accompanies it is so stunning, that the rest of the film can’t quite live up to the promise of the first five minutes.
Geeks Without God talks about AA Again
After we talked to Marc Baker for last week’s episode, we sat down and recorded an episode with our friend Zach Nyhus. Like Marc, Zach is a recovering alcoholic who has found a road to recovery in AA. He’s also an atheist who was put off by how much god there was in the 12 steps. However, he found a solution in a secular AA group.
It makes a great companion piece to last week’s episode but it also stands on its own quite well. For someone who is struggling with addiction but put off by the religious nature of AA, this is a really terrific way to discover what options might be available to you.
Grail Diary 