Green Jello Hotdish

The socially conservative American Family Association is calling for people to “take action” on Best Buy’s decision to not use references to any holiday during the winter season, bucking the trend of other retailers, including giant Wal-Mart and department stores Kohl’s and Federated who will be upping the ante of Christmas verbiage.

What is most repulsive, however, is the AFA’s assertion on its Web site that shopping is the whole point of the Christmas season:

While many other retailers have decided to return to the traditional “Merry Christmas”, Best Buy will not be among them. Best Buy considers the use of “Merry Christmas” to be disrespectful.

But while Best Buy, the largest consumer electronics company in the nation, will not be mentioning Christmas, they sure do want the shopping dollars from those who remember the Reason for the season.

Sadly, this is continuation of the excessive commercialization of the holiday season. The conservatives complain when we’re “missing the point” of Christmas by shopping until we drop. But then when corporations downplay that connection… you guessed it, they complain that we’re not spending ENOUGH money.

I’ll be doing all of my shopping abroad this year, as my upcoming travels are at the height of the shopping season. But if I wasn’t, I still would do my shopping at socially responsible, progressive businesses. Check out the Buy Blue listing and see where your favorite store ranks to start. Do your research, and don’t stop there. Google the company and find out where it stands on gay rights, employee relations, sourcing… Become a conscientious consumer!

I wasn’t going to blog about the obvious. But I’m irate, and it was a given.

I have not heard a single argument in favor of the marriage ban that has not been religious in nature. The very term “marriage” is rooted in religion. The matter should not be handled by the state in the first place. “Marriage is sacred,” they say. “This vote protects the sanctity of marriage.” The state is not sacred — it is secular. Let’s call this argument faulty logic number one.

Faulty logic number two comes in when determining the civil benefits for marriage are for means of protecting children and the family. I won’t waste my time repeating the many reasons this is a bad argument; anyone who has watched Grumpy Old Men can figure out why this is false.

Which brings me to my favorite, faulty logic number three: using “civil union” is just rhetoric. See faulty logic number one. If anyone is using poor rhetoric and word games, it’s those who stand in favor of this ban.

So congratulations, Wisconsin. You are unfair. You are marrying church and state. (Pun intended.) We should be changing all terminology to secular language, not passing further legislation blurring the separation.

New Zealand’s top education authority announced they will allow “text-speak” in national examinations. That should capture attention by itself, but the fallout in the blogosphere is even more deserving.

This is a bad idea on many fronts. I could give you my reasons why, but I’ll just let those who have spoken receive more credit. This comment, by Kenno, in response to the post by Engadget, summarizes the kiwi point-of-view:

Ye Gods, they already speak a lower form of English in NZ, this will drive the place back into the dark ages of literacy. NZ is hell bend on not putting the little darlings under any stress or putting any kind of challenge in front of them where one person might exceed another — it’s becoming Walden II down here and we will suffer for it.

There were two Canadian comments to the same AP report from the Globe and Mail that were particularly interesting. The first from S Lucht:

What a great idea! Just like Ebonics was a great idea.

The second, as direct entry, from GB:

perfect…train the youth for their future years of using those obnoxious Blackberry phones…the english language has gone to hell in a handbasket anyways…no surprise here…and i am sure the ever popular lazy profs are all for this…the less they have to read, the better….having gone to university, i remember my great profs…arriving to class in track suits, incoherently rambling for 2hrs, drinking an alcohol laced coffee and then giving us a project to work on… just a matter of time before this is adopted in Canada..

Looks like GB shouldn’t be criticizing incorrect English publicly. Notwithstanding, if students haven’t discovered there is a difference between formal writing and peer communication, there’s a bigger issue at hand. And I’m going to vouch for the second: there has been a great breakdown in contemporary education distinguishing that difference. Is it teacher laziness, as some have claimed? I don’t think the buck stops there. As a society, we have become so infatuated with the notion of time, that making effort to do something right in the first place is now “inefficient.”

Yesterday’s ruling in New Jersey, and the subsequent strategizing on both sides, raises my concern for victory in Wisconsin against the marriage ban in November. On one hand, it’s a victory for equality. On the other hand… it’s still a victory for equality, just less so.

The New Jersey court did exactly what the conservatives insist courts don’t do. They deflected the issue out of their realm back to the hands of the lawmakers. While they established the position that gay and lesbian couples have the right to all of the privileges of marriage, they stopped short of legalizing same-sex marriage. That’s a big catch: the legislature now has the responsibility to frame what the institution will look like.

New Jersey already affords “domestic partnerships,” which offer only a fraction of the protections, rights and responsibilities of civil marriage. One option would be to expand those domestic partnerships, still creating a different term for the same thing. Another option, of course, is to fully extend the term marriage. Yet another option — a remote one — would be to disband civil marriage altogether, call the whole institution something else, or do something that fully equalizes the status across societal boundaries and removes the inherent connection of church and state.

But what does this mean for states, like Wisconsin, that have ballot measures this fall? We can only wait and see, but I’m not expecting much sleep between now and Nov. 7.

Funny how quickly America forgets. Not so funny is how easily America is bought and deceived.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has been emerging as the key swing vote on the bench as the first term of the Roberts court. An article today in the Christian Science Monitor, specifically addressing the constitutionality of the partial-birth abortion ban, had this to say:

With the possibility of the court divided 4-4 on the issue, Kennedy may wield the decisive vote. If he sticks to the analysis in his dissent in the Nebraska case, court watchers say the law will be upheld. If he adheres to his strongly held belief in stare decisis - affirming precedent even when a justice disagrees with it - the federal law will be struck down.

Kennedy wields extreme, unimaginable power in this court’s composition. Will over 30 years of women’s rights and progressive ideology be nothing more than a numb memory? How about the past century of civil rights and racial equality? Or the few federal protections afforded to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered persons?

With the religious right and conservatives set out to quite effectively unravel the progress that has been made in this country, I can only hope Kennedy continues to walk that line of stare decisis and uphold legal precedent. The bench ought to be apolitical: equal justice under law. Sometimes, I wonder if English civil law had it right all along — after all, if all one has is precedent, it’s awfully difficult to make sweeping, dramatic changes.

As planned, I saw the movie Jesus Camp last night with Chris and Bryan. The best summation I can provide is from Chris himself:

That is the scariest movie I have seen in a long time.

The reviews simply don’t do this movie justice. One knows it’s a good, unbiased documentary when the reviews are a mixed bag: those involved with the actions call it a good film, in this case, claiming the film will change the hearts and minds of Americans to radically follow Christ, and those avoiding the actions say the same, claiming the film will finally bring to light what the evangelical, charismatic, pentecostal movement is doing.

What is most repulsive to me, however, is how indoctrinated these kids are being to the radically anti-family, anti-values, anti-liberty platform of the Republican Party. At one point in the movie, a cardboard cutout of President Bush is brought in, and the kids kneel at his feet to call upon him to continue the “good work” he is doing. (One can only assume they’re not talking about election fraud, misclaims about WMD in Iraq, or the inability to read children’s books right-side-up.)

Ted Haggard, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, is preaching in his home congregation in Colorado Springs at the end of the movie. He takes a couple of moments to be candid with the filming crew following the service, and expresses his joy at the statistics. And the statistics are staggering: every two days, a new megachurch is planted in the United States. The evangelical movement claims 25 percent of the U.S. population. What the evangelicals want, the evangelicals get, because they have the critical mass necessary to steer this entire country.

But possibly even more upsetting is what comes next; the praying and speaking in tongues calling for abortion to be overturned. These kids are as young as five, far too young to have an understanding of what the birds and bees are, let alone what abortion consists of. For a group of people to be having them dress up, standing at the foot of federal buildings in Washington is simply inappropriate. How is this showing family values? How is this letting kids be kids? At five, I was playing with rocks and sticks. Strike that — I’m not sure if I even graduated to rocks quite yet. I wasn’t protesting. I didn’t have any idea of what the government was. I knew there was a guy named President Bush (the other one) and there was a place called Iraq (the first time) and I knew my aunt was going there and I was excited because then we got to babysit her cat. I didn’t have a clue.

Oh, yes, Iraq. Didn’t come up once in the movie as being a mistake, as being contrary to God’s word of peace and justice. It was George Bush is wonderful, the Congress is now wonderful, America is turning from its demonic ways, and the separation of church and state has lost its time because it allows for a diversity of opinion and has destroyed itself because the evangelicals have the truth.

But truthfully, my favorite part of the movie, was when this ten-year-old girl was approaching African American strangers in the park and asking them if they were sure they would go to heaven when they died. They assured her they did, but she wasn’t satisfied with their answers. Finally, she walks away, announcing to the kids who were with her, “I think they were Muslim.”

If you can watch this and not be angry, not be upset, not be outraged, then you are a better person than myself.

(My personal favorite quote is toward the begining of the trailer, when the young boy says he accepted Christ at the age of five because he “wanted more out of life.” Of course he wanted more out of life. He was five.)

Doctrinal differences about the justification by grace through faith, not by works aside… this is scary stuff! The movie comes to Chicagoland theaters tomorrow. I’ll be attending, along with a small group from Carthage. Check back for a full review, but in the meantime, check out what Nick Coleman of the Minneapolis StarTribune had to say.

It’s not clear who the enemies are, but we know who they aren’t: There’s a scene showing the kids praying before a cardboard cut-out of President George W. Bush.

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.

Oh surprise, surprise. The ruling by the state elections committee against Republican gubanatorial candidate Mark Green was upheld today in Dane County Circuit Court.

In addition to Green’s ridiculous advertising, like this ad that claims Wisconsin kids are leaving because of high taxes (to places like Minnesota and Illinois, which have higher tax burdens than Wisconsin…), and the viscious attack ads on Jim Doyle, this is just the icing on the cake. Green has been doing his damndest to separate himself from being the Washington sheep that he is.

Of course, it seems he is leading over Doyle. Which terrifies me. There are too many important issues facing Wisconsin to have to deal with more Republican mismanagement in Madison. A capital punishment referrendum. A vote on a civil union and gay marriage ban. Plus increasing pressure from the NRA to allow conceal-carry, and I’m terrified to think of where I’m going to have to move after Wisconsin. The places in the United States are getting slimmer and slimmer.