Good luck girls

Irina Fyet and her partner will try to become Russia's first lesbian married couple on Tuesday May 12.

Given Russia's deep rooted homophobia, I doubt they'll succeed. They have a back up plan, which is to get married in Canada, or Norway, where you don't have to be a citizen to get married, and then return to Russia and try and get the marriage recognised.

Three years ago, Russian Police, militant Orthodox Christians and neo fascists violently broke up the first gay rights march in Moscow. (I'd love to see a Venn diagram depiction of those 3 groups, I suspect they all overlap 100%)

Next week will also see Russia's gay pride marchwhich willpurposely coincide with Moscow's hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest and competitors will be asked to back homosexual rights on stage.

The Russian Orthodox Church, resurgent since the fall of the Soviet Union, has helped turn public sentiment against gay pride events, which the then head of the church, Patriarch Alexey II, has called "propaganda for homosexuality."

Bloody savages

Here's a story of mixed messages.

Ameneh Bahrami was terribly scarred and blinded in 2004 when a spurned suiter poured sulphuric acid over her.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/13/AR2008121302147.html

In the weird and barbaric world of Sharia law, the condemned man was originally sentenced to be blinded in one eye, because one man is worth two women, thus two female eyes equal one male.

Bahrami appealled and the sentence was changed so that the attacker will now be blinded in both eyes, under anaesthetic via 5 drops of sulphuric acid in each eye.

Bahrami feels that she has not asked for more than her due, given the suffering, pain, disfigurement and blindness she has endured.

Today, International Womens Day, it is good to know that female eyes have the same worth as mens' in Iran.

Atheists don't do charity, apparantly

How volunteering can stave off depression

Don't waste money on expensive therapy, give up your time for someone else

Julie Burchill reckons that athesists are too busy being intellectual to help anyone.

Those wonderful atheists are obviously too busy doing something intellectual to be bothered with helping others.

She also believes that depression is on the rise because:
a. People are less religious than before
b. People do less voluntary work than before

the Christian presence has stayed constant as middle-aged women have been tempted into more self-regarding activities. And as this has happened, their levels of depression have risen, because religious faith and voluntary work are the twin tried-and-tested pillars of happiness.

If you feel the self absorbed La Burchill needs correcting you might leave a comment on the article at the Times website, linked above.

Child Abuse?

This lady and I grew up in the same country, Zimbabwe. We both left that country to find better lives elsewhere. That's where the similarity ends. For she is a fundimental born again Christian. And she believes her 4 year old daughter is a wretched sinner.

Sometimes during the day or before bed, she always asks me if she has been good, and I always try to be as honest as I can with her, and I will tell her what she has done wrong if I can remember. If she has been better than usual I will praise her and tell her. I have never said to her she has been a perfect little girl who has done nothing wrong all day, If I say that to her then I am a liar and I will be doing her more harm than good. I do not believe in teaching children self esteem or that they should feel good about themselves, because they should not. My daughter is a normal 4 year old who loves to play with her dolls and dress up, but everyday she finds that she is doing things that are wrong like doing something to upset her baby brother or not doing what she is told by her mum. So we have a problem, and this is an everyday battle. The problem is sin. I never taught my daughter to sin. This is because she, and as well as the rest of the human race have inherited a sinful nature from Adam. From the moment we are conceived we are sinners, Pslam 57:5. We are born with a desire to sin. We are all born God hating and evil.

The poor wee mite then told her mother that although she tries to be good, she can't and that she knew that only Jesus could help her to be good.
Jean thinks that she has left no imprint on this child and so it must be the Holy Spirit that has revealed this to the poor tortured girl.

This is bordering on child abuse, and I told her that in the comments.

I don't know if she will delete it, probably not because she is not scared of confrontation on her blog. She took a lot of flak for a previous post on her support for slavery.

Oh Jean, I am disappointed.

That is only a step away from child abuse.

4 years old and wracked with guilt daily.

"I do not believe in teaching children self esteem"

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear.

"So we have a problem, and this is an everyday battle"

Oh my word.

"She is a wretched little girl, who knows she is a wretched sinner who needs only a good saviour to help her."

Jean, that is terrible. Terrible. It amazes me that you and I who have some things in common can be so polarised, so far apart.

This post is one of the most shocking things I have ever read. And to think that you are pleased about it and want to share it, and to think that other people have written to say they admire you for it. Your poor little girl. If I was the praying kind I'd be praying for her right now.

Hate Speech

With any luck, some radical will blow up the gay school. No, I'm not condoning vigilantism--I'm merely saying that it would be poetic justice.

Such are the thoughts of Raani Starnes on her blog about homeschooling.

She also says:

Yes, I've seen the previews for Will and Grace where they're lying next to each other in bed platonically. Isn't that cute? The homosexual agenda wants people to think that homosexual men are safe for women to hang around and even be alone with. Nothing could be further from the truth. The stories about Sodomites in the Bible teach us that they do violate women as well as men. I've also known of people personally over the years who were known as gay yet "experimented" with the opposite sex. The term bisexual is an unnecessary distinction, because a faggot wants to defile anyone or anything he can get his hands on.

This lady is the mother of five children who she schools at home. I presume she teaches them this hate too.

from the comments to the blog post she states that

I believe that a homosexual can no longer get saved. They weren't born gay and God wanted them to get saved at some point. The reason they are that way is that they have pushed God too far and he has given up on them.

and

When someone seems questionable in that area, I would be polite in a group setting if necessary, but never leave my kids alone with that person for safety reasons. The person I am referring to has also abused children. When someone is a known pedophile or homosexual they should be completely cut off.

If you are as appalled by this woman's hatred as I am, can I suggest you go to her blog and use the "flag blog" option at the top of the google screento alert google. With a bit of luck they'll pull the plug.

Catholic Church uses drug money

Mexico drug gangs building churches: bishop
Reuters

Violent drug gangs in Mexico, which kill thousands of people a year, fund the building of churches in impoverished villages to try to win over locals, a senior Catholic bishop said.

"They are very generous," Bishop Carlos Aguiar told a press conference, Reforma newspaper reported on Saturday.

Aguiar did not say if the drug gangs directly gave money to the Church to use for building places of worship or if they supported the construction works in other ways. Church officials could not be reached for comment on Aguiar's statements, made on Friday and published in several newspapers

"I'm not justifying it, I'm just saying how it is," he said.

Well that's alright then

A thief is a thief

Scandal gnaws at Buddha's holy tree in India
Religion and gods are created by people.
People can be (amongst other things) dishonest and selfish.
Religious people can be (amongst other things) dishonest and selfish.

There's a temple in the Bihars state of India, in the town of Bodh Gaya. The Mahabodhi Temple is where for three days and three nights, Siddhartha Gautama sat under a fig tree, in the sixth century BC. He then gained enlightenment and became the Buddha

Picture slide show here

100,000 tourists and pilgrims visit every year. Temple donations means lots of money. And here comes the problem. Money is unaccounted for. The fig tree at the back of the temple has had a thick branch cut off and sold, and statuettes of the Buddha have gone missing.

The temple is run by Hindus who see Buddha as an incarnation of Vishnu. Buddhists, on the other hand see Buddha as, err, Buddha. Buddhists claim that they should be responsible for the temple, and not the Hindus.

District magistrate Jitendra Srivastava has been running the temple committee since the scandal surfaced and the last committee's term expired. On the handover of temple supervision to Buddhists he said:
"A thief can be a Hindu or a Buddhist," he said. "A thief is a thief, he has no religion."

Nearly right.