“Again, there is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication. It’s a fiction. It’s not in the Constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.
“It’s derived from a single letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Convention.
“Of course, we should have church and state mixed together. Our Founding Fathers believed in that.
“We can go through the details of that. They established, literally, a church in Congress.” – Charlie Kirk, today.
When Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to Congress he was sworn in using a koran — Thomas Jefferson’s koran, as matter of fact. You could hear the sound of conservative heads exploding across the country.
The problem with the US Constitution is that it was written 200 years ago by intelligent, educated people, and it’s being read and interpreted and mis-understood today by ignorant uneducated people.
There are exactly 2 mentions of religion in the constitution, both negative. No religious test for office, no establishment of religion. 200 years of constitutional interpretation, until recently, upheld this idea.
So now Christian adoption agencies that take taxpayer funds can discriminate against the LGBTQ+ and other religions. Originally the SCOTUS said it was ok for the public to pay for these religious groups that discriminate against the LGBTQ+ because the worstdiscrimination is against religion itself, and by not letting them not serve the gays was discrinimating against the religion. Now it seems the rule is the Christian religion is the one that must not be discriminated against but may discriminate against all other religion. One more step on the path to Christianity being the national religion and another few steps toward the US theocracy. Hugs
Tennessee judges have dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Knoxville couple who alleged that a state-sponsored Christian adoption agency refused to help them because they are Jewish.
The lawsuit challenged a 2020 state law that installed legal protections for private adoption agencies to reject state-funded placement of children to parents based on religious beliefs.
The challenge by Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram said Holston United Methodist Home for Children in Greeneville barred them from taking state-mandated foster-parent training and denied a home-study certification while they attempted to adopt a child last year.
A three-judge panel of the Chancery Court in Davidson County ruled 2-1 to grant a motion to dismiss the lawsuit against the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services and DCS Commissioner Jenifer Nichols.
The panel majority also ruled that “the Plaintiffs have not shown that the Defendants would not contract with a Jewish agency similarly situated to Holston United Methodist Home for Children; therefore the Act does not single out people of the Jewish faith as a disfavored, innately inferior group.”
Holston CEO Bradley Williams told CP he believes “forcing Holston Home to violate our beliefs and place children in homes that do not share our faith is wrong and contrary to a free society.”
The adoption agency is represented by the anti-LGBTQ hate group, the Alliance Defending Freedom. In 2003, the ADF filed a Supreme Court brief in defense of the criminalization of homosexuality.
A Tennessee court dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Jewish couple that alleges religious discrimination in a state adoption law. https://t.co/VkJTCuwGft
Tennessee passed a law designed to allow adoption agencies to turn away same-sex couples on the basis of "written religious or moral convictions or policies."
Now a publicly funded adoption agency is declining to work with Jews too.https://t.co/X9rrvehr84
I know. I think most of us in this forum see what is happening
Even those who think they’ll be fine because they’re whites and Christian are in for a rude awakening when they have a terminal pregnancy or want conception or want to watch a porn movie or get arrested for getting a blow job
the Plaintiffs have not shown that the Defendants would not contract with a Jewish agency similarly situated to Holston United Methodist Home for Children.
A quick search seems to indicate there are NO Jewish agencies in Knoxville, TN.
Of course not, its the same bullshit the SCOTUS uses when they write terrible decisions. Its not based on facts, its based on a predetermined outcome and working backwards from there.
If it was a jewish agencie doing this against a Catholic or Christian couple you better believe they’d rule in favor of the couple.
The Jewish couple should take this up to the SC and see what happens.
What is alarming is that at the beginning of Nazism in Germany, the police stopped responding to Jewish citizens reporting vandalism. Having people who are worthless trying to make you feel worthless is a spooky concept to process. We had a cop tell us he won’t take samples of the vandalism. We are concerned that is could be toxic. But then again he may already know what it is and is not telling us. Scary times.
Said it before and I’ll say it again. Anyone who is a religious minority etc. who thinks “religious freedom” laws will only target LGBT citizens is a fool. They will be coming for you sooner or later.
“So, why didn’t anyone raise an alarm? Well, maybe because he didn’t stand out. Maybe because there are a lot of young men in America who suddenly look and act a lot like this guy.
“And of course, they’re angry. They know that their lives will not be better than their parents’. They’ll be worse. That’s all but guaranteed. They know that. They’re not that stupid.
“And yet the authorities in their lives – mostly women – never stop lecturing them about their so-called privilege. ‘You’re male, you’re privileged!’
“Imagine that. Try to imagine an unhealthier, unhappier life than that. So, a lot of young men in America are going nuts. Are you surprised?” – Tucker Carlson, last night.
Tucker Carlson just blamed the 4th of July mass shooting on “mostly women” who “never stop lecturing [men] about their so-called male privilege.” He also blamed “social media, porn, video games,” and “government-endorsed weed.” (h/t @acyn) pic.twitter.com/jpmMstbuvV
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) July 6, 2022
there are a lot of young men in America who suddenly look and act a lot like this guy. “And of course, they’re angry.
Because they and their parents have been carefully indoctrinated by Fox “News”, the Republicans and the entire right wing bubble.
Blacks are taking your jobs Mexicans are taking your jobs Drag queens / liberals / teachers / Hollywood are grooming your children Obama / liberals / deep state want to take your guns Vaccines have micro ships etc. etc. etc.
The right wing echo chamber indoctrinates for thoroughly and effectively than ISIS.
Right; I’m thinking of the many people around the world whose situation is truly hopeless. Being white, American, and lectured doesn’t rank high on that list.
It’s anything but white supremacist propaganda and the easy availability of military-grade weapons that leads these people to kill folk. Anything. It’s so desperate it would be funny if it wasn’t for the pile of bodies.
So which is it? Strong mothers used to be accused of creating gay men (for some reason these creeps never seem to obsess over lesbians) NOW strong mothers create mass murderers?
Tucker Carlson Spent A Week In Brazil Slobbering Over Strongman President Bolsonaro
“We can add Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to the list of right-wing authoritarians who make #TraitorTucker Carlson swoon as he poops all over the U.S. while on foreign soil.
“Tucker Carlson’s vicious anti-Americanism is disturbing enough, especially coming from a network that presented tweets about enjoying Memorial Day Weekend, from President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as insufficient love for the troops and America. Not so coincidentally, Carlson actually smeared the troops on the next day, Memorial Day, saying on the air, “Our military, at times, does not seem interested in protecting the country.”
So if you can’t be a coddled white supremacist who should consider the privileges from the accident of your birth and consider how others can be helped to improve their lives, killing random people with a military weapon is justifiable?
Stop and think that about how it is those very people–entitled, white, rich–in search of ever greater profit and damn the consequences for “little people” who created this world where you might not do as well as your parents.
And then consider that the anti-social cynicism, expressed by this clown is just a trick to keep you watching the advertising that pays for this.
“They know that their lives will not be better than their parents’. They’ll be worse. That’s all but guaranteed. They know that.”
Notably, Tucker neglected to point out that the depressing future he describes for those kids is almost entirely due to Republican policies that have pushed all economic gains to the top 1/10th of 1%.
He should rename his show the “Tucker Carlson Nightly Disinformation and Propaganda Spectacular”
There is an entire world of discourse in those four words. We should definitely blame women for the poor choices of these poor, stupid, snowflake, violent, unmanly boys. We can take the blatant misogyny all the way back to the very first poor, stoopid, Snowflakey, unmanly boy.
“The woman you made for me gave me of the fruit of the tree, and I did eat.”
It is hard to tell whether Cucker‘s low opinion of males is exceeded in bottomlessness only by his low opinion of AMerican women.
In this brilliant new rant for MeidasTouch, Texas Paul breaks down how GOP governors and leaders would make the the worst business leaders and CEOs. Texas Paul uses governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis as examples and asks us to imagine a CEO who instead of solving the business issues facing the company, blamed the corporate problems on the LGBTQ community or immigrants instead of solving the problems before them and how quickly they would get fired. Texas Paul concludes by discussing the importance of competent leadership so that government can function for the people. It’s time to get rid of these incompetent Republican leaders.
Fear of prosecution forces doctors to choose between protecting themselves or patients
State laws criminalizing abortion have put physicians under intense scrutiny and made them fearful, with implications that extend well beyond abortion.
CNBC’s Kate Rogers joins Shep Smith to report the Great Salt Lake in Utah is shrinking, and concerns it could be the equivalent of an environmental nuclear bomb.
Hello Everyone. I know I left off yesterday in a really bad state and some of you may wonder how today is for me. I was up until 3:30 in the morning. I went to bed with Ron but couldn’t stay there. I was far too anxious and upset. So I stayed in my office watching videos and trying to distract myself. Ron came out to check on me twice. I got up at 7:30 AM and I couldn’t walk without support. My back feels very weak and like it won’t hold me up. I went back to bed for an hour to get my back under control. Because of all the extra medication I took yesterday my stomach is a bit off, not bad but for most of the morning I wondered if I would be able to eat. It seems to have settled down now. I am in a lot of pain today. So that is the physical side. The emotional side is raw. I feel raw, I feel stronger than yesterday but that is because I am avoiding triggers as best as I can. I am trying hard to avoid things that might call or activate the vortex. But it is hard to do with the news today. The story of the little 7 year old girl who had her medication taken away from her by the adults in her life came very close to pushing me to the edge again. By last night I was in a very bad state and I don’t want to go there today. So that is where I am at. My mental state is not stable, I am very close to the edge right now. I keep feeling like I want to cry some more / again. I am not sure what activity to do to keep strong and to avoid falling back into the bad places. I may just stop on the computers for today and play Xbox and Halo. Thanks everyone. Hugs
The gun was legally bought! Law abiding people shouldn’t have their 2nd amendment rights hindered is the talking point of the right. It is a dodge. All gun owners are law abiding until they break the law. Right. The issue is the guns. This country has too many guns that are far too easy to get. Full stop. The new ruling from SCOTUS ensures more guns carried in public by more people. Of course the Justices don’t care, they are well protected by several police forces, people can not even protest near their homes, they have personal security details, and they never have to go out among the unwashed masses. The rest of us do not have that protections, we have to be out in the community wondering who is carrying a gun and having a really pissy day. Who came out armed after a fight at home or with the neighbors? The fact is the gun situation is going to kill the US economy. We have a service economy built on people shopping and eating out. Already people started buying online. A lot of people won’t go out of eat, to movies, to events if the are afraid of the gun violence. So that stuff stops. People will gather at home in small groups, they will leave the public spaces to the young and the gangs. This is going to radically change the way people in the US live. Plus schools may end up going fully remote. As a parent do you want to send your kid to a building that is regularly attack and kids die? What about going to the office to work? Who there is carrying a gun? People will want to work from home. See the effect of that one weapon on the entire society that the protected elite don’t care about? Hugs
Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said while she didn’t know where the gun used in Monday’s mass shooting in her city came from, she told NBC, “I do know that it was legally obtained.”
Rotering said she had known the shooting suspect, Robert E. Crimo III, as a child. “I know him as somebody who was a Cub Scout when I was the Cub Scout leader,” the mayor told NBC. “He was just a little boy.”
Rotering said the focus in the discussion about the shooting should be about “the fact that there are weapons of war on our streets, that people can legally obtain these and then take out dozens of people.”
Any gathering of any crowd is now a risk of a shooting. We had one in Philly last night at The Welcome America concert on the Parkway. No one was killed.
The mayor said he was going to be happy to not be mayor when his term is up having to deal with the shooting rates in Philly. One big problem is the state won’t let Philly write a gun control law for the city.
Bambino🇺🇦🌻•3 hours ago•edited The fact that it was legally obtained, what does that says about assault rifles that belong in the war zone are okay to be use in a civilize society?
It’s as clear and obvious as it can possibly be that GQP politicians *WANT* massacre victims within our borders to sustain war injuries. They’re not happy unless everyone is thoroughly engaged with their continuous, endless war. Without this war they can’t win the hearts and minds of their target demographic: evangelicals who worship a genocidal deity.
And why do they want it? Because they are paranoid that a Democrat president will take away their guns. So they need to guns to protect their right to own guns.
Yes, that’s what we’ve been saying for years, no one should possess a weapon of war, legally or otherwise. That’s what we’ve been screaming into the deaf GOP ears and they just make it easier for people to get their hands on one.
I came here to say similar. I liken it to the nightly body count during Vietnam where even we lost Walter Cronkite to help turn the public against the senseless war. Emmitt Tills’ mother insisting his body be shown to make the public aware of the brutality.
At this point I’m beyond caring what either a democrat or republican says about gun control, It’s too fucking late to try closing the barn door now. There’s literally millions of assault style weapons or actual weapons made for theatre’s of war out there to try to put a lid on it now. The population as a whole would need to be on board with confiscating and destroying those already obtained WoW and that just isn’t going to happen, no matter how horrific the body count goes, there are a significant number of 2A zealots out there that will fight tooth and nail to keep their precious symbols of “freedumb”. This problem is our new reality, trying to educate or legislate away having and keeping these guns is a fallacy in today’s America. There is a lot to be said about serious mental health care and spotting the behaviors of those that have been responsible for the thousands of mass shootings in the past. But until we has a nation respond to it, that won’t change either.
Grenades and rocket launchers, also known as bazookas, are considered “destructive devices” by the National Firearms Act. They are also classified as firearms and are therefore legal with proper registration.
I’ve told this before, but I have a nephew in Missouri who honestly believes that the 2nd amendment allows all Americans to be free to own any type of weapon, up yo and including atomic bombs. He scares me. He also has a bug out place hidden somewhere in the Ozarks that only he, his wife, parents and younger brother know the location. Sadly, in this part of the world that isn’t uncommon. I’ve often wondered if he belongs to some of the nationalist groups the Ozarks is full of.
Twelve members of a religious group in Toowoomba have been arrested after the death of an eight-year-old girl, who Queensland police say was allegedly denied life-saving medication in the belief she would be healed by God.
Elizabeth Rose Struhs had type 1 diabetes and died in her family’s Rangeville home, west of Brisbane, on 7 January. Police allege her parents, who have previously been charged with murder, began withholding insulin six days earlier.
Police allege paramedics were not called to the scene until 5.30pm the next day, with the Courier Mail reporting members of the church group believed she would be resurrected.
Her dad, Jason, 50 and mum, Kerrie, 46 allegedly chanted prayers and hymns with up to 20 members of their breakaway Christian church who surrounded their child rather than get her life-saving medication.
Some of the members of the group, who call themselves ‘The Saints’ as they believe they are at the height of Christianity, even played the guitar as the little girl lay dying and no one called an ambulance.
The parents have now been charged with murder, torture and failing to provide the necessities of life for the youngster – alongside 12 other members of the group who were taken into custody for murder charges on Monday (July 4).
Queensland police arrest 12 members of religious group over death of eight-year-old Elizabeth Rose Struhs https://t.co/cs2d41KLWp
Fundamentalism is the ultimate expression of narcissistic hubris. They pray and they claim God speaks to them. Think about that for a second. They prey. And then they believe the voice inside their own head is the literal voice of the creator of the universe. They believe their own thoughts are God.
Let’s just be honest here, there are people who are fundamentally broken, or lost, or in such pain that they’ll gladly reach out to anything that gives them some solace or structure. Then there’s just the large swath of folks who want to feel like they’re in on something special (see QAnon)… thus Kabbalah, numerology, a sparkling variety of cults and quasi-cults, and groups like these.
And that doesn’t even get to the people whose whole social structure is based on their church membership, and the churches are designed intentionally for that purpose. Why else have a church with a theater, day care, gym, and so on if not to make it near impossible for people to leave because they’d have to give up just about everything?
A legitimate question is where do their religious rights ends, and the state’s interest in protecting the child begin. I thought, and all of you thought that we knew where that boundary is. I’m not sure that we do any more.
I was taught in the fourth grade (back in the ’50s) that my right to swing my fist ends just before it hits another person. In other words, as I read the constitution, I cannot use MY rights to suppress or deny another person THEIR rights. The Handmaid’s SCOTUS just blew up the wall of separation between church and state.
Under the new regime a woman’s uterus and any byproducts thereof (i.e. children) are considered the property of the nearest male relative and are exempt from state oversight, since men can do whatever they want with their own property.
Scottie's Playtime 