Related, here’s Cynthia Gorney speaking about girls who are forced to marry (due to prearranged marriage) when they are as young as five. Very sad.

About 32 percent of gay couples in Jacksonville are raising children, Mr. Gates said, citing the 2009 Census data, second only to San Antonio, where the rate is about 34 percent.

Just last year, Florida’s ban on adoptions by gay couples was overturned in the 3rd District Court of Appeal, and the state decided not to appeal.

However, Florida’s Governor Rick Scott has just appointed a conservative Christian by the name of David Wilkins as the head of the Department of Children & Families. According to the Miami Herald:

Wilkins, a member of the governor’s transition team, is the finance chief of the Florida Baptist Children’s Home, a private agency that allows only “professing Christians” to adopt children in its care.

Elsewhere, Scott is quoted as saying that he feels “adoption should be by a married couple.” That’s a nice little way of weaseling out.

It looks like Florida has a situation where the Governor is setting himself up to oppose a growing part of the state’s population. I have a feeling this is going to get ugly.

It’s hard to believe that hitting kids in school is still allowed, but I guess when you’re into hitting defenseless children it’s hard to give up. A new bill hopes to ban it:

Legislation to ban corporal punishment in most public and private schools was introduced in Congress Tuesday.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) introduced the “Ending Corporal Punishment in Schools Act,” which would impose the ban on all public and private schools with students that receive federal services.

Though there is no evidence that corporal punishment has any beneficial effect on students, and much evidence that it harms kids, 20 states still allow it.

School districts generally have their own rules for administering corporal punishment, or, in layman’s terms, whacking a kid. Sometimes the rules specify the number of times a kid can be hit, and usually they identify which part of the body can be struck (usually the buttocks but sometimes the hands, too). You can see some of the rules in a recent post here.

A congressional committee recently heard testimony about the subject and here are some of the facts members learned:

*School officials, including teachers, administered corporal punishment to 223,190 school children across the nation during the 2006-07 school year (according to conservative government estimates, the latest year for which national statistics were available).

*As a result of that punishment, 10,000 to 20,000 students requested medical treatment.

*Students are typically hit on their buttocks with a wooden paddle, approximately 15 inches long, between two- and four-inches wide, and one-half inch thick, with a six-inch handle at one end.

*Most students are paddled for minor infractions, violating a dress code, being late for school, talking in class or in the hallway, or being “disrespectful.”

I think this can only be a good thing. Teachers should not be allowed to hit children. Do you agree?

Guilty as Spongebob

Jim’s writings were revered like Apostle Paul’s in my childhood home. His Focus on the Family propaganda is so wholeheartedly American that it became brand. After three decades of homo-terror warnings, not even his ridiculous boycott of Spongebob made him lose credibility among disciples. Spongebob is guilty of “homosexual advocacy,” Dobson says.

He was born in Louisiana in 1936 and born again at three. He received his doctorate in child development in 1967, and later founded both Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council.

Both oppose women, gays, and science. Dobson describes gays as “Nazis” and “THE greatest threat to your children. It is of particular danger to your wide-eyed boys, who have no idea what demoralization is planned for them.”

They want more funding for abstinence ed, a proven failure since the U.S. has 70 times the rate of gonorrhea among youth than European countries with sex ed, and among the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the world.

The Same Song and Dance

His evidence is often based on the work of Paul Cameron, disbarred from the APA for making up research. Other sources have made it clear that Dobson has twisted their work or not even read it.

Dobson quoted in Time, Drs Carol Gilligan, of Harvard: Kyle Pruett, of Yale, and Angela Phillips, of Goldsmiths College. All 3 were irate that he lied about data, among a barrage of letters from experts he’d used in various works. Some asked him to post their letters on his Focus website with a public apology. He didn’t.

Dr. Robert Spitzer was among the outraged. He helped remove the disorder status from homosexuality in 1973. And so his 2001 research showing that “gays could change” was praised by Dobson for the “courage” to overturn the “myth.”

But Dr. Spitzer said Focus “once again reported findings of my study out of context to support their fight against gay rights.”

Calling Dobson on his lies doesn’t faze him. “Communities do not let prostitutes, pedophiles, voyeurs, adulterers, and those who sexually prefer animals to publicly celebrate their lifestyles, so why should homosexuals get such privileges?”

Poor Little Wiener Dog

Unruly wiener dogs are another thorn. Jim brags in one book about beating his dog for not heading to bed on time. “That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other,” he writes.

His other pet issue is against “population control.” Dobson supports fringe extremist prolifers like Randall Terry. He thinks taking the Pill or the morning after pill is abortion, too.

Tubal ligation? “For obvious reasons, the Bible is absolutely silent on these recent technological procedures.” Umm, yes. Obvious reasons.

But for a man who concerns himself with “helping families thrive,” he sure hates children. “… pain is a marvelous purifier,” he has famously written. In one of many parenting guides, he calls kids: bratty, pugnacious, anarchists, horrid, negative, sour, sullen, selfish, insane, obnoxious, spoiled brat, groaning lump, and so forth.

Dobson also demanded the resignation of a minister who asked Christians to care about creation! The climate controversy is shifting the “emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence…”

Let it Rain

But does any of Dobson’s nonsense really matter?

Time Magazine called him “the nation’s most influential evangelical leader.” His media empire spans 150 countries and 7,000 TV stations, reaching 220 million daily. Chris Hedges called him “perhaps the most powerful figure in the Dominionist movement.” He is widely accredited with rallying the Lord’s troops to vote for and land the win of George Bush.

Obama of course is “lowest common denominator of morality” with a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Constitution, who edits “God’s word to fit his liberal worldview.” So Dobson’s servants released a video commanding Christians to pray for “rain of Biblical proportions” on the day of Obama’s historic nomination speech.

It was sunny all day. But rain it did — at the Republican convention. Hurricane Gustav hurled itself at the southern Bible belts, causing the largest U.S. evacuation exodus in history with 2 million people headed north.

The Lord has spoken.

Hmm, I wonder why I didn’t make many friends?

Thankfully I didn’t attend a church quite as bad as the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainsville, FL which has been sending their students to school with t-shirts that read “ISLAM IS OF THE DEVIL” in large print on back:

More children from the Dove World Outreach Center arrived Tuesday at area public schools with shirts bearing the message “Islam is of the Devil” and were sent home for violation of the school district’s dress code when they declined to change clothes or cover the anti-Muslim statement on their clothing.

What if a Muslim students started wearing shirts that said “Christianity is of the Devil”? Christians would be having conniptions about how they are being persecuted and how they would fear for their poor little fundie kid’s lives. I see now that the school district staff attorney had the same exact thought, which makes me like him already.

On Monday, a 10-year-old fifth-grader at Talbot Elementary was sent home because of the shirt. On Tuesday, two Eastside High students and one Gainesville High student were sent home and a student at Westwood Middle had to change clothes because of the shirt, according to members of the Dove congregation.

Dove Senior Pastor Terry Jones said no local company “had the guts” to print the shirts. Dove member Wayne Sapp said he then ordered the shirts over the Internet from a company that allows individuals to design their own shirts. His daughter, Faith Sapp, 10, was the Talbot Elementary student sent home Monday. She said she was allowed to wear the shirt to school on Tuesday – with the Gospel message on the front visible but the anti-Islam message on the back covered.

Wayne Sapp’s daughter, Emily Sapp, 15, was the student sent home from Gainesville High on Tuesday. Both Faith and Emily Sapp said it was their decision, not that of their parents, to wear the shirts to school in order to promote their Christian beliefs. Emily Sapp said the “Islam is of the Devil” statement was aimed at the religion’s beliefs, not its members….

Jones said that, to him, spreading the church’s message was “even more important than education itself.”

This pastor sent his 10 year old daughter with this shirt on. I think that says all I want to know about him.

Do you think these types of t-shirts should be allowed in public schools?

I don’t.

It gets crazier and crazier. I have no idea how people can think like this.

(via)

I’m sure we’re all familiar with the story of Elisha and the She-Bears, from 2 Kings 2:23-24:

[Elisha] went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.

I think Heinlein mentioned this passage in about half his books. Well, he wasn’t the only person to find this passage an inspiration. In the 18th century, some pious lunatic decided that this was the perfect scene to immortalize on a cookie mold. Because there’s nothing that will make the kiddies happier when they get their treat than a reminder to respect their elders … or else.

The link will take you to the site of “House on a Hill” who are helpfully producing a modern facsimile. So you and kids can share the type of experience that their therapists can spend years unpacking, all for the low price of $65.

If they offer a bulk discount, I’m sure Hemant Mehta would want one, too.

The other day my consultation work brought me to a Christian daycare center. I was appalled by the amount of religious indoctrination that was occurring — all to children under the age of five.

Some of the things that I had to listen to that these children now believe to be facts were (in no specific order):

• Jesus came back from the dead.
• Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus.
• Halloween is evil (I have no idea how this came up)

There could have been more but I tried to tune out as much as possible. It was causing me distress to see such young children indoctrinated with a belief system based on events that did not occur.

At this age, children do not have the critical thinking and reasoning skills to be able to discern that what they are being told may not actually be true. The trust the adults in their lives and think they know everything and would never tell them something that is be untrue.

Thankfully, if I was able to overcome the brainwashing, these kids also have a chance. But it will take a lot of work for these kids to adopt a rational and skeptical mindset when from a very young age they are taught to believe in miracles.

The craziest part of the morning was when the teacher had the four year olds gather in a circle to play “Duck, Duck, Goose” — or so I thought. Instead the children had to yell: “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Is Alive!”

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh at the insanity or cry for these kids.

What do you think — is this acceptable religious indoctrination or, as Dawkins might say, religious child abuse?

Matthew G. is a born again skeptic with a great ambition for helping others to think rationally.

He believes God makes us suffer, so we should imitate him and make our children suffer by spanking them.

No, I’m not kidding, and no, this isn’t a parody.

Here are some quotes from “Would Jesus spank a child?“:

If Jesus were married and had children, I think he would have spanked the children.

Actually, I think the wonder-working Jesus would have been able to control his kids without hitting them, don’t you? If he could walk on water and rise from the dead, it seems doubtful he’d need to spank his children to keep them in line.

But why would someone think it’s a great idea to hit children? For Piper, it’s a view of God who hurts his children because he loves them:

Deep down, does this person believe that God brings pain into our lives? Because … God disciplines every son whom he loves, and spanks everyone that he delights in (my paraphrase). And the point there is suffering. God brings sufferings into our lives, and the writer of the Hebrews connects it to the parenting of God of his children….

God uses suffering to discipline his children. So do we.

Oh, so God’s like an abusive husband who hits his wife because he loves her! I get it now. He’d be gentle and kind, but that just wouldn’t be as effective, you know?

God also kills his children throughout the Bible. This seems only a couple steps away from, “But God said to kill our children if they talk back! And he talked back to me! God hurts us if we disobey him, and we should hurt our kids if they disobey us! That’s what the Bible says, officer! I’m the one in the right here! I’m just following God’s holy word!”

Can it get any worse? Why yes, it can:

Now, you don’t damage a child. You don’t give him a black eye or break his arm. Children have little fat bottoms so that they can be whopped.

That’s kind of like saying kids have hair to be pulled, or girls wear bras to be snapped. He continues:

Spanking is so clean! It’s so quick! It’s so relieving! A kid feels like he has done atonement and he is out of there and happy…. I just think spanking is really healthy for children.

I just don’t know how to reply to that. Clean, relieving, and healthy for children? What an odd perspective.

So what do you think — would the biblical Jesus have spanked his children? And of more relevance, should we spank our children?

For those of you who are fortunate enough not to know, Fred Phelps is the pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. He is known for rallying his church — which mostly consists of family members — to hold up protest signs at homosexual funerals and functions that say things like “God hates fags,” “Thank god for dead soldiers,” “You’re going to hell,” and other equally horrible and insane things.

His kids had it tough:

“The Bible says ‘spare the rod, spoil the child,’” explained Nate, “and he would be screaming that out as he was beating us.” One Christmas night, Pastor Phelps hit Nate over 200 times with a mattock’s handle, swinging it like a baseball player….

[Pastor Phelps would also] beat the kids with his fists and kick them and knee them in the stomach.

Fred Phelps would probably be an angry person without the Bible — but with the Bible as his guide, he can sanction the beating of his children by God himself. And instead of the Bible arguing against his cruelty, it appears to support it. And that’s disgusting.

Later in life Nate tried to go to church and believe. But when he started teaching his children about God, one day his son started crying because he didn’t want to go to hell. Old memories from his own childhood came back and he realized he was participating in religious/emotional child abuse.

He is now an atheist:

“I do declare myself an atheist now,” affirmed Nate, “although I’m willing to admit that there’s stuff in life that I’m not real clear on yet.”