Arnold and Meg

Here is a great ad against Meg Whitman, who is trying to buy the election - outspending Jerry Brown 10 to 1. I sure hope she doesn't succeed.

Atheist Bigotry

This is something that really upsets vjack over at Atheist Revolution:

- Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) launched a bigoted tirade against atheist activist Rob Sherman, telling him that it was dangerous for children to even know of the existence of atheism. Despite the public nature of her outburst (during the General Assembly), some media attention, and calls for her resignation, Rep. Davis faced no consequences. She merely delivered the sort of non-apologetic apology to Sherman that we have become used to seeing from bigots and resumed business as usual. Calls for a pubic apology were ignored.
- Christian schools were given free reign to discriminate against students suspected of being lesbians. In fact, it was deemed acceptable for such schools to remove students at will for "immoral or scandalous behavior that contradicts Christian values."
- Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-North Carolina) utilized blatant anti-atheist bigotry during her campaign against opponent Kay Hagan. Although Dole was ultimately defeated, the mainstream media largely ignored the bigoted nature of her strategy of painting Hagan as an atheist. In short, the whole debacle provided other politicians with little reason not to make anti-atheist bigotry a campaign strategy.
- California passed Proposition 8, rolling back previously granted civil rights to GLBT residents. They were able to do this because of a highly organized and well-funded effort by Christian extremist communities. Once again, media coverage largely ignored the religiously-motivated bigotry.

I made a comment but it ended up being long enough and good enough I wanted to turn it into my own blog post:
Don't get discouraged, vjack. Look at the reactions to the things you mentioned. Monique Davis was thoroughly condemned by everyone, which means her bigotry was clear and made even Christians uncomfortable. The Christian school thing I hadn't heard of so can't comment but with Elizabeth Dole the key point is that she lost. In a southern, conservative state her attack on atheism went completely unheeded.

The worst of them is Prop 8 here in California. That hits me personally since I live here and voted against it. But after all the demonstrations by gays who weren't going to take it any more someone did another survey and found that 8% of those who voted for Prop 8 would now vote differently, which is more than enough to change things if the vote were held today.

The ads from the Mormons were confusing and the Prop itself was confusing, I think a lot of people didn't truly understand what they were voting for. Many thought it was about protecting children and didn't even know it was about gay marriage. And I have not heard anyone on TV come down in favor of the Mormons actions in spending $20 million to support Prop 8. I think a lot of people, even those not willing to support gay marriage, were shocked at the level of bigotry that represented and the unabashed mixing of church and state. And there are now a lot of left wing TV and radio people who all made negative comments about the passing of Prop 8. Used to be only a right wing voice was heard across the airwaves, but that has changed, thanks to Keith Olbermann and Air America.

So it hasn't been all negative, change takes time but I see a change happening in the zeitgeist.

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The Day After Christmas

Yesterday was a strange day but not an unpleasant one. For the first time in longer than I can remember I was completely alone with absolutely nothing that I had to do and no place I had to be. All great luxuries for me that I enjoyed very much. I spent the day playing computer games, searching all over the web for whatever popped into my head and watching TV. It was also my first stress free day in at least 15 years.

I’m keeping an eye on myself because I’m doing much better than I ever thought I would when Darcy passed on. I’ve had 15 years to think about life AD (After Darcy) and the past year most of all because it was obvious time was running out. Perhaps that prepared me for now. Perhaps I’m just in denial and a full load of grief will suddenly hit me and turn me into jello. I don’t know. I do know that I’m feeling a lot of relief. I know that sounds terrible but when you’ve spent 15 years with a sword over your head to have it over is a relief. Hard to worry about anything when the worst has already happened. I am constantly seeing something where I think I have to tell Darcy about that but I can't do that ever again.

I have been crying a lot, especially when finding something emotional on TV or the Web, like this one; "Please don't divorce us." Photo after photo of families that don’t want to be divorced because Prop 8 passed, and make no mistake the Religious Reich is filing a law suit to have all such marriages done in California annulled. Could there be any better proof that Christianity is a religion of hate?

There were people who had worse Christmases than me. The 6pm news yesterday started out with 2 shootings at Christmas parties with 7 dead and two separate car crashes where the cars flipped over, several dead and several in the hospital in critical condition.

The worst one was Bruce Pardo. He had just gone through a bitter divorce so he went to the house of his ex-inlaws in Covina with 2 guns and a homemade flame thrower and wearing a Santa suit. He knocked on the front door, an eight year old girl opened it and he shot her in the face, then stepped inside shooting everywhere then using the flamethrower, the house eventually burned down. 6 people dead but the 8 year old is expected to survive. His ex and her parents are missing. Bruce then went to his brother’s house and killed himself on the front lawn. Very uncool all around, Brucie. You want to off yourself do it in your own place and don’t take others down with you.

Update: His ex and her parents were found, burnt to a crisp and hard to identify, they had to go by the teeth. Her sister is the only one of the family left. I can understand the kind of despair that brings someone to suicide but I simply can't understand the impulse to take others with you.

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