Shit that Pissed me Off – 3/14

Get Raped at Pensacola Christian College and…Get Expelled!

Wait…what????

Welcome to a right-wing Christian college!  We want to make sure that you follow the straight and moral path so if your boyfriend abducts you and rapes you in a construction site, we’ll ensure you know it is because you are a spoiled vessel who doesn’t deserve to be around decent people!  Especially decent men like your rapist boyfriend!

A regular by-product of fundamentalist religion (any fundamentalist religion) seems to be the shaming of women.  It isn’t enough that you are subservient to men.  You should, in fact, be ashamed of your gender.  If you are raped, it is your own fault for existing.

Actually, it’s Eve’s fault. Blame her for the fact being a woman is so awful.  The church isn’t run by a bunch of misogynist assholes.  It’s her fault!

As is frequently observed, this attitude is no more helpful for men than it is for women because it teaches men that they have no responsibility for their own behavior.  Basically, if you are a guy who sexually assaults a woman, it isn’t your fault.  You can’t control yourself.  She is supposed to do that for you.  If she fails to control your sexual urges, she should be punished.

Tell me again how religious liberty is under attack in this country.

The Pro-Life Humanism Argument

I am not shocked to learn there are atheists who are pro-life any more than I am shocked to find that there are atheists who are against same-sex marriage.  Hell, there might be atheists who believe the earth is only a few thousand years old.

In reading the arguments of the pro-life humanists, though, I end up having a cognitive disconnect because I just can’t wrap my brain around her argument.  She says that mothers have rights but the rights of the potential life inside the womb is just as important so that means the mother has no right to an abortion.

It doesn’t sound like equal treatment if one life is made subservient to the other – as a woman is when she is pregnant.  It sounds like the mother becomes a vessel for the child until the child is out of her womb.

That doesn’t feel like the two lives are given equal weight.

Also, she made a Yes, Virginia joke.  Fail.

Megachurch is Robbed of $600,000

I’m not condoning thievery of any kind.

Holy shit, though.  $600,000?  In one day?  Does anyone out there have the slightest idea what could be done with that money if it wasn’t going to fund that church?

People can do whatever they want with their money but if they really want to give to charity, I can think of a lot of them that could use $600,000 a week more than a big church.  That church could pay off the homes of many of it’s poorer members.  Every week.

God will provide. Us. Not you. Us.

It could ensure every single hungry child in a major city (like – say – Houston) would have access to healthy food.  Every week.

It could provide day care for one hundred mothers currently on welfare because they can’t afford to work and pay for child care.  Every week.

It could provide health care to everyone in the church who doesn’t have a job that will provide it for them.  Every week.

Ask yourself what you would do with 31 billion tax free dollars a year.  Now ask why any single church should have that much.

Michelle Bachmann Thinks She is Being Bullied by Homosexuals

It is ironic that Bachmann, who has spent the bulk of her political career bullying homosexuals, now feels that she is being bullied because she is losing.  Also, she uses language poorly.  Here’s what she said:

And the thing that I think is getting a little tiresome is the gay community have so bullied the American people and they have so intimidated politicians that politicians fear them and they think they get to dictate the agenda everywhere. Well, not with the Constitution you don’t.

The thing is, she is confusing religious liberty with religious entitlement.  In America, you can believe whatever you want.  That doesn’t mean you can force that religious belief on anyone else.  She talks about “traditional marriage” as if she has the right to define “traditional.”

She doesn’t.  Nor does she have the right to discriminate against a protected class.  Bachmann thinks the Constitution is on her side but it really isn’t.

Target Was Warned About Their Data Breach and Did Nothing

If this Bloomberg article proves to be accurate, the security system Target installed to warn them about a breach worked perfectly.  They were told there was a problem.

Then they didn’t do anything about it until they were told again several days later.

It’s a bad week for people at Target failing to pay attention, isn’t it?

People make mistakes but this is kind of incompetence, if true, is disheartening to say the least.  It means that a whole lot of people had to go through a whole lot of pain for no particularly good reason.

I’m not angry at Target, if that makes any sense.  I’m angry at the people working in a specific department who made a series of really bad choices.

This Week’s Meme That Pissed Me Off!

I’m touching on Abortion twice in one week.  Sorry about that.  However, I just needed to highlight one of the less convincing arguments against abortion ever.

Whoa!  False equivalency much?  You are talking about finding evidence of bacteria on another planet.

Yeah.  That would be amazing because it would prove that life isn’t unique to Earth.

On Earth, however, life is not unique.  It is all over the place.  And most of us don’t give a shit about it unless it is a developing baby inside someone.  Women have millions of bacteria in their bodies.  They are life.  I don’t see anyone campaigning against antibiotics. Vaccines, sure.  But not antibiotics.

How many pro-lifers are vegan?  How many of them have no problem killing a mosquito?

Unless they value every form of life, this argument is invalid.  Life comes in many different forms.  What this meme is talking about is human life.  And a potential human life at that.

If you really truly believe that “life is life,” then you need to carefully explore all of your choices that go against that statement or revise your statement and say “human life is human life.”  We still won’t agree but at least you will have been honest.