Posts Tagged ‘ FTB ’

More Debbi Pearl

Sep 4th, 2011 5:38 pm | By

More from “how to be a really high-quality doormat for God.”

This past week the local Preparing class invited two older mothers to share their experiences in marriage. It was quite sobering, and some of the girls came away from class unnerved by the burdens of marriage. What the mothers wanted to convey to the girls was, “Learn now while you are young to honor your husbands. Learn patience to continue in your role as a Help Meet, and commit yourself to God now while you are young so you can avoid some of our trials and errors as we struggle to find our way.”

Great. The girls were “unnerved” by the prospect of lifelong slavery, and what “the mothers” … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Women are faint copies of men

Sep 4th, 2011 4:14 pm | By

Libby Anne’s parents always taught her that women and men are equal…sort of.

My parents taught me that men and women were different and had different roles to play, but that men and women and their roles were also equal and of equal worth. The male role is to provide for his family and protect them, to engage in politics and spiritual warfare, to have a career and make the decisions for his family. The female role is to keep the house and home, raise and teach her children, exercise hospitality and offer service to others, and support her husband. I was taught that these two roles are equally important and that men and women were thus different, but equal.

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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



The fawning glitterati

Sep 3rd, 2011 6:14 pm | By

Terry Glavin doesn’t think much of Julian Assange.

Julian Assange, the Wikileaks archgeek, radical-chic avatar, the Chinese
Communist Party’s nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, Michael Moore’s
joint-venturer, absconding debtor, American celebrity pornographer Larry Flynt’s fair-haired boy, darling of Cindy Sheehan, Medea Benjamin, Bianca Jagger…

Lo, Assange hath now been found to have released more than 1,000 cables outing individual political activists – several thousand tagged as sources who could be placed in danger – and more than 150 cables outing whistleblowers, people persecuted by their governments, and victims of sex crimes.

Such is his courage in speaking truth to power that Assange had already prompted Zimbabwe’s chief executioner to set up a commission to pursue treason charges against

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Read this article

Sep 3rd, 2011 4:59 pm | By

In case you’ve missed it – I posted an article at Other B&W by the author of the Love, Joy, Feminism blog. It’s a must-read. She tells us what it’s like to grow up in the Patriarchal/Quiverfull world, and what it’s all about, and what it took away from her.

A wife and mother was all I wanted to be, because any dream of anything else was nipped in the bud before it ever took root. I truly believed that this was what God wanted of me, and that serving my family and raising my siblings was serving God. And I gloried in it.

That’s one of those philosophy thought experiments it’s interesting to puzzle over – if you … Read the rest

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A pox on compassion

Sep 3rd, 2011 11:43 am | By

Eric has a post on Christian interference and coercion with respect to assisted suicide. One aspect in particular hooked my attention.

Christians who are anti-choice-in-dying have been complaining for some time now that it’s not just about pain. In fact, they point out that of those in Oregon who choose assisted suicide very few are in intense pain. It is, they say, because of loss of independence, loss of dignity, loss of control that people choose to end their lives, not just because the pain is unrelenting and uncontrollable. And that is true. Choice in dying is not just about pain. It is about choice. It is to provide choice for people who do not want to go on living

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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



How to patronize the wimminz

Sep 2nd, 2011 5:16 pm | By

William Hamby has a rather annoying article on women in atheism. (The annoying quality is probably inevitable. We get tired of being written about. We get tired of men saying about women. That’s probably unfair; we’d probably get tired of men not saying, too; but all the same – it gets tiresome having men say about women.) He bases it, for some reason, on the elevator thing – and as G Felis points out, he does it rather snidely. He makes an arbitrary and unexplained distinction between “radical” and “mainstream” feminists that boils down to agree-with-Watson and disagree-with-Watson respectively, and I have to say that’s not consistent with usage over the past four decades or so. Agreeing with Watson … Read the rest

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Snipping around the edges

Sep 2nd, 2011 4:37 pm | By

Suzanne Moore is not persuaded by the new gang of anti-abortionists.

Now this new breed of anti-abortionists snip round the edges of the process with their strategies of delay … er, sorry, “independent counselling”. But beware their language of care. This is not about care but about control. This control absolutely depends on shame: sexual shame. This shame keeps us quiet. Shame keeps us locked into individual guilt. Shame even makes us stupidly grateful that we are allowed to have any choice at all.

This whole debate around counselling pivots on the idea of deep and private shame, positing the idea of counselling being used to sell an evil procedure. Women are always “vulnerable” dupes, never simply adults who

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A thoroughly disreputable approach

Sep 2nd, 2011 3:45 pm | By

Oh honestly. Bad scientists, no cookie.

The editor of a science journal has resigned after admitting that a recent paper
casting doubt on man-made climate change should not have been published.

The paper was outside the journal’s field.

Publishing in “off-topic” journals is generally frowned on in scientific
circles, partly because editors may lack the specialist knowledge and contacts
needed to run a thorough peer review process.

“The problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted…, a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers.

“In other words, the problem I see with the paper… is not that it declared
a minority

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Elsie Dinsmore

Sep 2nd, 2011 3:03 pm | By

Ever read any Elsie Dinsmore books? No, neither have I. I know the name, because it’s a byword for slushy pious Victorian dogoodery, though I don’t remember where – Little Women? Which is no slouch in the slushy pious Victorian dogoodery department itself, so maybe not. Mark Twain? Possibly.

They’re now big with the Incredibly Christian set. Rethinking Vision Forum is not impressed. But the part I really liked is from a comment there. The commenter read the first Elsie when she was a child and asked her mother what she thought of it.

“What a wet blanket.  That girl did nothing but cry all the time.  I think every page her eyes filled with tears and

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He taught me critical thinking

Sep 2nd, 2011 11:24 am | By

Another escapee is Libby Anne. She gives a ten-part account of being a good child of Patriarchy and then of being turned around.

The childhood is by no means all horrible, even seen from the outside. Much of it is quite appealing.

I also enjoyed gardening. We always had large gardens, and we children did a great deal of the tending and weeding, sometimes waking at dawn in the summer months to weed before the summer heat. In addition to learning to garden, I found books at a homeschool convention about edible plants and medicinal herbs and set out to teach myself these important skills. I learned that dandelions could be eaten in salads, that plantain was good

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My faith dispels any doubts

Sep 1st, 2011 4:40 pm | By

And by the way three cheers for female genital mutilation.

…some communities see the practice as an integral part of their culture. “I have two daughters and five nieces, all circumcised by doctors. I do not consider it a human rights violation because, according to our religious teachings, it has been divinely ordained. My faith dispels any doubts that some might put in my mind,” says Shaheen Abdullah.

Good old god! “He” designed us the way we are and then ordained that the females of us have to have our genitals chopped off. Why not just not include the genitals in the original package then? Why construct the thing only to ordain that it should be carved up and … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



Get out

Sep 1st, 2011 4:14 pm | By

One woman escaped the “Quiverfull” nightmare. First she entered the trap -

I remarried, found a “bible-believing” church, and worked hard
within the Quiverfull counterculture to implement the best of the best biblical
family values into our home life.  I had six more children. I homebirthed,
homeschooled, and home-churched. I submitted to my husband and joyfully
sacrificed my time, energy and talents to build him up and help him to succeed.
I published a “pro-life, pro-family” Christian family newspaper to inform and
encourage other Christians to defend “Traditional Family Values.”

In 2003, we were honored as Family of the Year at the Nebraska Family
Council’s “Salt & Light” awards.

Then she noticed how bad it was -

…perpetual pregnancies

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(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



The history of dissident thought

Sep 1st, 2011 11:10 am | By

It’s embarrassing and shocking that Michele Bachmann can be a serious candidate for president. The same goes for Rick Perry; the same goes for Mitt Romney; the same goes for Sarah Palin. Susan Jacoby thinks Americans’ ignorance of our history of secularism is part of the problem.

 I am less concerned about whether the American public is unacquainted with secular philosophy than I am about its vast ignorance of the founders’ determination not to establish a Christian government. College courses cannot fill the empty space left by public elementary and secondary schooling in which secularism is considered a dirty word instead of an honorable part of American history.

If Americans were not in dire need of remedial education on

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No more tiptoe

Aug 31st, 2011 4:38 pm | By

An atheist comes out as an atheist. In Kentucky.

I have often tiptoed around stating my lack of religious beliefs because, like
many people in a minority, I fear being shunned and judged. I’ve described
myself with words like non-religious, humanist, and freethinker and have most recently been playing with the “Unitarian” label. But as my kids get older, I don’t want them thinking there is anything wrong with me saying exactly what I am, in terms of my personal religious faith: an atheist. There, I said it. I am an atheist. I AM AN ATHEIST!

Hey Leanna. There are lots of us out here.

 … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)



He knew what God wanted, and what men wanted

Aug 31st, 2011 4:22 pm | By

Woho, looky here – the opposition looks at Vision Forum.

A former stay-at-home-daughter and now stay-at-home wife and mommy says she wishes she’d gone to college.

All of these books taught that the world was a very dangerous place for a woman. God had designed her to be at home, creating a peaceful haven for her husband and children. The books said that any girl who left her father’s protection and went out into the world to get an education or job would end up sad and alone, because she was not living the life God willed for her.

God wanted us to dare to live differently. His plan for women involved getting back to the family principles the

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Frankly, people do think you’re a nutter

Aug 31st, 2011 12:41 pm | By

Christina Patterson doesn’t share Tony Blair’s affection for injecting “faith” into politics.

You might think that someone who doesn’t believe in a theory
accepted by almost every scientist for more than a century, and who wants to
restrict the rights of half the population to make decisions about their own
body, and thinks that every human being in the world who doesn’t “accept Jesus
as their saviour” will literally go to hell, would have US voters rolling their
eyes. But it doesn’t. You can’t, in fact, even think of running for office in
the world’s only superpower if you don’t, in the now famous words of Alastair
Campbell, “do God”.

Bad combination – superpower, and must do god. Even worse … Read the rest

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And all I got was this stupid T shirt

Aug 31st, 2011 12:03 pm | By

Really, J C Penney? Really?

 

What the hell is that, skool for future “Sex and the City” airheads? A scheme to make all women as empty-headed as the “real” “housewives” of New York/New Jersey/Hollywood/Las Vegas/Miami/Topeka? Or just a calculated insult to women in general?

They’ve withdrawn the T shirt now, thank you for small favors, but why did they come up with it in the first place? What next? A funny-haha girls’ T shirt saying “I’m too stupid to do homework so I’ll just go to work at J C Penney when I grow up?”… Read the rest

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A better butterfly

Aug 31st, 2011 10:11 am | By

The wheels are in motion (or do I mean they’re turning, or grinding? I want to get my clichés right, here) and I’m just about ready to start posting at the Freethought B&W. Once the banner is in place I think that will do it.

Josh fixed up my avatar, so it’s more elegant now. Less sloppy and less sparkly, both.… Read the rest

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Test Post

Aug 31st, 2011 9:29 am | By

This is a test post, the sole purpose of which is to see whether automatic cross-posting from Butterflies and Wheels at FreeThoughtBlogs to Butterflies & Wheels Prime works.

 … Read the rest

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