Shit that Pissed Me off – 2/21
Student Suspended For Pretending He Was Having Sex With a Teacher
What pisses me off is the simple fact that every time someone makes a false accusation, it is that much harder for someone who is actually a victim.
Now let’s be clear – this kid was making a joke. He was not trying to get anyone in trouble. What he didn’t realize is that his joke had real world consequences. He could have cost an innocent teacher her job.
Because even if everyone reading his tweet knew that he was telling a joke, law enforcement has to act as if he wasn’t. Because what if he wasn’t?
Excuse me, ma’am. I’m going to have to take you down to the station and scare the shit out of you because one of your students is an idiot.
This kid did something stupid and while his lengthy suspension may be a little bit severe, kids need to understand that what seems like an innocent joke to them can hurt people more than they could possibly imagine. Instead of standing up for him, his classmates should be standing up for the teacher who could have lost her job and gone to jail because of a joke.
And they also need to realize that he made it that much harder for someone who is actually suffering from abuse to be heard.
Shit That Pissed Me Off – 2/14
Disney Star Gets Death Threats Because Her Show Featured Lesbians
The star in question, Mia Talerico, is five years old.
Her show featured a play date in which her friend had two moms. You know, a healthy happy lesbian couple. Just the sort of thing that causes the bile to rise in the average Christian Right household.
Yeah. This sort of thing is really threatening.
So what’s the Christian thing to do?
Not being a Christian, I’m a bit uncertain. Can someone tell me if threatening the life of a five-year old girl is the Christian thing to do?
And can someone tell me how this kind of behavior comes even close to hating the sin and loving the sinner?
Also a memo to “One Million Moms” – you currently have only 60,000+ “likes” on Facebook. You could increase that number twice as fast if only you allowed lesbian moms!
Shit that Pissed me off – 1/31
Oklahoma Lawmaker Wants To Ban All Marriages
There we have it ladies and gentlemen, the nuclear option! If we can’t stop those pesky gays from getting married, we’ll just stop everyone from getting married.
We all knew this had to happen eventually, right? While these people aren’t bigots or homophobes (just ask them), they are willing to carpet bomb the entire idea of marriage rather than allow that their idea of what marriage should be in not the only valid one.
When you write stuff down in your idea journal in the morning, sometimes it should stay in the idea journal
In the process, a party that seems really interested in preserving the rights of the small businessperson is willing to propose a law that will screw over thousands of them! Every event planner, photographer, florist and baker in Oklahoma will lose a whole lot of income if there aren’t any weddings.
But who are we kidding? Churches will still be allowed to perform weddings. And because they are churches, they are welcome to discriminate (or not discriminate) in any way they see fit.
Convenient. Read More…
Shit that Pissed me Off 1/24
Dude is Going to Hunt a Black Rhino and People Respond in a Logical Fashion
This is a story in which nobody involved comes out looking particularly good.
One the one hand, you have a guy who is spending $350,000 to kill a critically endangered animal. Yes, that money goes to conservation efforts and the animal he’ll be killing is too old to breed. He’s doing the black rhinos a favor by killing one of them!
This one looks super grateful!
You gotta wonder, though, about a guy who is so anxious to kill one of them that he’s willing to pony up $350,000 to do it.
On the other hand, he is getting death threats. People are threatening his children.
How does that make it better? You don’t like the fact he’s going to kill an animal so you threaten his family?
What a fucked up circle of life.
Shit that Pissed me off This Week – 12/6
I missed two weeks. Apologies to my small by loyal fan base. This covers three weeks of stuff. I tried to be picky but you may want to expect that I’ll be more long winded than usual.
They can’t help it.
They are one of those states that has constitutionalized discrimination against same-sex couples and because they are constitutionally forced to discriminate, it’s the only way they can comply with the Supreme court ruling.
You gave benefits to legally married same-sex couples who are in the National Guard? GO TO JAIL!
Or some bullshit.
The gymnastics people go through to deny rights to someone who is serving our country makes me want to vomit. Especially when most of these people belong to a party that regularly talks about how much we need to respect our troops.
Well, you know, they meant the straight ones.
Shit that Pissed Me Off This Week – 6/14
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is Off the Rails
Kennedy has long been an Anti-Vaccine crusader and I dislike the anti-vaxx movement with only slightly less zeal than the creationist movement.
I have two children on the autism spectrum. They were both vaccinated and I know two things:
1) Vaccinating my kids did not make them autistic
2) Even if it did (and it didn’t), I would rather have autistic children than children with Smallpox or Polio
You think this guy was happy he wasn’t vaccinated?
Kennedy and others like him have been pushing misinformation and, as this article proves, they are willing to name names. They people they name, however, never actually said what they are claimed to have said. Nor do the studies they cite actually say what they claim those studies say.
So all he is doing is engaging in character of assassination.
I get that big pharma is theoretically evil but here’s the thing – vaccines are not. Yes, pharmaceutical companies make money off vaccines. I guess that’s a price I’m willing to pay to ensure that my kids don’t get the measles.
Claiming vaccines cause autism is to make the claim that you understand a shitload more about autism than all the folks out there researching the condition.
And in the meantime, making people afraid of vaccines is contributing to the rise of diseases we thought had been eradicated. That’s what I call a lose-lose.
Shit that Pissed me Off this Week – 5/31
Arizona State Representative was so Upset an Atheist Rep. Didn’t pray, he Prayed Twice
I missed this one last week, sorry.
So here’s what happened. Arizona State Representative (and secular humanist) Juan Mendez gave an invocation that did not include God. They take turns giving the invocation, it was his turn and he gave an invocation based on his beliefs. Which is totally his fucking right.
Representative Steve Smith was so upset about it, he offered up a special prayer the next day for “repentance of the previous day.” In addition to a prayer he’d already given. Because he had to make up for Mendez, I guess.
Oh god, please forgive my fellow legislators for being tolerant of beliefs other than their own. As I’m the only one of them without sin, I’m going to cast the first stone.
Now let’s step back for a moment and ask what the appropriate response would be had Mendez given a Hindu prayer. Or a Jewish one. Or an Islamic one. Would that have been OK because he’d mentioned a god or gods (even if they weren’t the right one)?
Assuming Smith’s response had been the same (two prayers to make up for the lack of a Christian one), would he have taken flak for choosing to disrespect any belief system other than humanism?
I’ll bet people would have been pissed as hell. Not just Muslims or Jews or whatever other religion he’d chosen to disrespect but Christians as well.
As it is, Smith will be applauded by the religious right for standing up to the godless left even though the godless left has had to tolerate Christian prayer in the Arizona state house for every day except one.
Shit that Pissed Me off This Week – 5/24
Florida Teenager Faces Felony Charges for Being a Lesbian
Actually, she isn’t facing felony charges for being a lesbian. She’s facing felony charges for statutory rape because she was having a consensual relationship with a girl who was 14. When she was 17, that was (at least according to the articles I’ve read), legal.
But she turned 18. And her girlfriends’ parents immediately had her arrested.
Update: Apparently it wasn’t legal when she was 17 because if you are under 16, you can’t have consensual sex with anyone in the State of Florida. It would seem they waited until she was 18 so she could be charged as an adult. Classy.
And the county prosecutor is going for it. Because the law is all about protecting the innocent and that fourteen year old was clearly being corrupted by her girlfriend the second she turned 18. There is, apparently, no nuance in statutory rape laws that takes the age of the offender into account. ‘Cuz an eighteen year old may be older than a fourteen year old but she is just as much of a child.
Oh sure, you can hold her hand now. But you’d better let it go before you turn eighteen!
If she had been a boy, I’ll bet this would not have happened.
Hey, you folks who are against same-sex marriage and who still think that you aren’t bigots – don’t you think getting an eighteen year old girl expelled from school and possibly putting her in prison because she’s a lesbian seems just a little bit bigoted?
Update: There is a lot more nuance to this case. I checked my sources before I posted it but bias is always a risk. I’m still annoyed by any situation that could have a child (and yes – an eighteen year old is still a child) sent to jail for fifteen years because of sexual curiousity. If there is one thing that scares the piss out of us in this country, it is human sexuality.
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.
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!!!!
Grail Diary 