The bakers fined $135K for refusing to bake the wedding cake. I actually had some sympathy for the couple who refused to bake the cake. They should be allowed to politely refuse to do so and face some bad publicity for their decision. My sympathy vanished, however, when I found out that they not only declined rudely to make the cake but they also doxxed the lesbian couple by giving out their names, address, email address, and phone number. Granted, this information *IS* public record because of the lawsuit, but the husband of the baker specifically shared it in anger and people used the information to send death threats to the lesbian couple.
(Libby Anne has a good blog post on this.)
The Planned Parenthood debacle. So here’s the thing: it wouldn’t surprise me if Planned Parenthood has had some unscrupulous people selling fetal tissue and I’m good with Congressional panels looking into this. HOWEVER… the Center for Medical Progress acted pretty dishonestly inasmuch as they had actors portraying people from a tissue company and in the fact that the video was pretty edited. All of the sites like LifeSiteNews that have broken the story are acting really smug about it and in a really distasteful way. LifeSiteNews in particular is so liberal with the inaccuracies in the news that they report that I honestly wouldn’t believe them as far as I could throw them and this is making me really leery to believe what they’re saying. On the other hand, I don’t trust Planned Parenthood either.
Truthfully, the news makes me feel tired. This article from America Magazine probably comes the closest to how I’m feeling.
A situation completely foreign to me as a West Coaster. Libby Anne’s blog post referred me to this one about a teacher in Mississippi who lost his job when a student outted him as an atheist. This horrifies me because I’m the daughter of a secular humanist and an agnostic/Buddhist and it scares me that one of my parents could be the person behind Godless in Dixie.
Why California does better under Jerry Brown. My mother-in-law gets a happy expression on her face every time someone mentions Governor Jerry Brown because, according to her, the state just does *sooooo* much better under his leadership. I’m having to admit that I agree, especially as he just signed into law a bill ending religious and personal exemptions for vaccines. Only kiddos who have specific medical conditions and a note from their doctor are exempt from the requirements. The only two other states who have passed a similar law are West Virginia and Mississippi, which kind of surprises me because you’d think that those two states would allow religious exemptions given the religious nature of their populations.
Owning one’s atheism. Neil Carter of Godless in Dixie appeared in a report on CBS This Morning on atheism. I’m watching it right now and it’s interesting. It saddens me however that his girlfriend’s father shunned him and his girlfriend because of it. The father just passed away and specifically asked that Neil not be allowed to be around the family while they mourned. That’s pretty serious hatred of someone right there.
Still, I’m glad for Neil and the others in the video that they are owning what they believe. Do I agree with them on their stances? No. Do I respect their dignity as people and would I have a drink with them? No question that I would!
The book I just finished. I just finished The Truth According to Us by Annie Barrows and while it wasn’t as good as her first book, it was pretty fabulous.
You know your book is old when… Killer Pancake by Diane Mott Davidson has been interesting to listen to, partially because the book is pretty dated. They’re talking about things like payphones which I haven’t personally seen in probably 5 years!
For more Quick Takes, visit Kelly at This Ain’t The Lyceum.
Hey Jen, why don’t you try tackling something controversial in your takes this week for a change huh? (Do I need to insert the winking smiley face?) #5 Will have to watch it when I get the chance. My husband’s best friend (and my good friend too. He’s the reason we ever got together.) is an atheist. Do I agree with him? No. But I love him to death and we all pray for him constantly. I can’t imagine cutting him out of our lives because of his beliefs. I don’t know why some people think we’ll win others to Christ by being angry.
Hey! I have to get my controversial spiel out sometimes!
If I didn’t have a profound respect for a person’s right to “work out [their] salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12b), I’d have a really hard time fitting into my family because my parents, brother-in-law, his wife, my sister-in-law (husband’s sister), her husband, her mother-in-law, and her brother-in-law are all somewhere on the spectrum of deism/atheism/agnosticism. It’s why I really feel for Neil Carter of “Godless in Dixie” — I’m in the same boat but reversed.
On the vaccine thing…. Even though it’s called a “religious” exception, more often than not it’s people who think that vaccines are dangerous because they’ve listened to bad pseudo-science. I’m stereotyping here, but there are probably more folks like that in California than in Mississippi 🙂 So I’m thrilled to hear that California changed their law!
There are religious exemptions and personal exemptions. The pseudo-science would be a personal exemption. (Ask me how I know this.)
I’d think in Mississippi there would be more people of a fundamentalist nature who would look at vaccines as unnatural medicine and would be against them for that reason.