Many of the people using the terms "slacktivism" and "slacktivist" probably shouldn't be. I'm not just being proprietary here -- this unironic pejorative use of those words doesn't work. It's self-defeating, because it repositions the speaker as a scold. And as a particular kind of scold -- the ineffective, grumpy old person whining about how kids these days are no damn good. Read more
A third of pregnant virgins took a chastity pledge and other benefits of "abstinence-only" sex education. Plus: Dinah, rape insurance in Michigan, rooms without women, men owning women's bodies, and fixing it all with Photoshop and shampoo. Read more
Mandatory birth control in China is of no moral concern for Hobby Lobby, but access to voluntary birth control for American women is something it will fight all the way to the Supreme Court. The company has no conscientious objection to forced abortion in China if such objection would interfere with its ability to get kitschy rooster ornaments for pennies for the dollar. But preventive health insurance for female employees violates it's deepest purported religious convictions. Read more
Christianist climate denialists don't understand science OR the Bible. Iowa search for voter fraud comes up empty. Ken Ham underestimates how successful he's been at creating new atheists. We need the pitching. Abstinence Skittles -- don't taste the rainbow until you're married. Ari Kohen on the "persecution" of American Christianists. Read more
Last year, a Special Lifetime Faith & Values Crystal Teddy Bear Award for Dedication to Redeeming the Values of the Mass Media of Entertainment was given to Pat Boone. Read more
Harold Camping spent his long life, including more than 50 years preaching on the radio, talking about eschatology instead of death. That's how he viewed it -- longing for an End Times to come before he was out of time. "Can you imagine, Rafe," Irene Steele said, "Jesus coming back to get us before we die." But now poor Camping has been swept away and we are left behind. Read more
Garrison seems to have been a difficult person to like, but an easy person to hate. That's partly because he was a prickly, vituperative writer and speaker who did things like burn copies of the Constitution, condemning it as "a Covenant with Death, an Agreement with Hell." He wasn't wrong about that. He wasn't wrong about much of anything. Read more
Check your fly, check your privilege. Black vs. Purple. Pranksters may lose in court, but they're highlighting hypocrisy. New England Journal of Medicine says respect the religious liberty of patients, not of CEOs who want to get in between patients and their doctors. Read more
"One of the tests of leadership at all levels of government is to confront problems before they become a crisis." That sounds like something one of George W. Bush's critics might say as an attack on the president's dismal fiscal track record, but it wasn't. It was President Bush himself, yesterday, in his speech concluding the White House Economic Conference. Read more
The cutting edge in advertising, plus more Monday links, including: Distrust of compulsory niceness; dinosaurs as damage control; exploding pig poop; necrocracy; how not to sound like a pompous twit; LIVESIHCODRUM; and a mission from God -- in Legos. Read more
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