The Salt Lake Tribune:

Pornography made her captor more violent, Elizabeth Smart said in a video posted online Friday.

Produced by the anti-porn advocacy group Fight the New Drug, the 5-minute video delves into how Smart’s convicted kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, would “just sit and look” at various “hard-core” porn magazines.

“I can’t say that he would not have gone out and kidnapped me had he not looked at pornography,” Smart says in the video. “All I know is that pornography made my living hell worse.”

Smart was held captive for nine months in the Utah mountains after Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Eileen Barzee, pulled the then-14-year-old Salt Lake City girl from her bed at knifepoint in June

When I saw this yesterday I thought it was satire – I assumed it was satire, I took it for granted it was satire. I had a good laugh and shared it on Facebook, thinking it was satire. Then I learned that it’s not satire – they mean it.

The title is We Messed Up. What follows is a hyperbolic, endless confession of wrong-doing over…a movie review and a lesbian taco shell.

And it’s not satire.

Yesterday we published a review of Seth Rogen’s new animated film, Sausage Party. After we received feedback about it from our Trans Editor Mey Rude, the members of the QTPOC Speakeasy and Facebook commenters, we decided to un-publish the piece. Here’s how

This one is just frivolous, but it’s so peculiar I can’t resist it.

The CBC reports:

A Washington state couple preoccupied with reliving the Victorian era — from their icebox to their undergarments — were asked to change out of their traditional costumes or leave Butchart Gardens near Victoria.

I remember reading about that couple; I thought maybe I’d blogged about them but if so I can’t find it. They do their “Victorian” thing all the time…except of course that they don’t, because for instance they blog about it, and Victorians didn’t have “blogs.” But apart from the internet and similar minor details, they pretend to be living in the 19th century full-time.

The Port Townsend couple booked tickets

I wrote about witch camps (via the BBC) in <i>Does God Hate Women?</i> This Facebook post thus makes me both happy and sad.

“I am so happy because I will see my sister every day now and I won’t have to wait on her visits here.”

This is Azara. After 21 years in the witch camp she is going home today. The purification process of the priest is complete and she is now a free woman.

21 years.

Azara is now going home to Wulensi to spend the remainder of her days living in peace with her sister.

It really is a happy day.

Oh look – another medal ceremony with US participants:

The other day there was this one:

Gabby Douglas was given a lot of shit for not conforming to what the other four did.

The reaction to gold-medal winning US gymnast Gabby Douglas neglecting to place her hand on her heart during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner at the medal ceremony does not strike me as a unifying moment. Los Angeles Times sports columnist Bill Plaschke spoke for a certain segment of the Olympic-watching public when he said on Wednesday, “The next time Gabby Douglas stands on a podium for the national anthem, she can forget the words, disagree with them, protest them. But here’s hoping she never

Good. Another bad thing to be undone.

The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision on Thursday in a memo that instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or “substantially reduce” the contracts’ scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is “reducing — and ultimately ending — our use of privately operated prisons.”

“They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a

Trump on Facebook:

I will fight to ensure that every American is treated equally, protected equally, and honored equally. We will reject bigotry and hatred and oppression in all of its forms, and seek a new future of security, prosperity and opportunity – a future built on our common culture and values as one American people.

“We will reject bigotry and hatred” – !!! Would you believe it?!

On another post he bragged that someone said he was Reaganesque. He appended a photo of his reaction.

… Read the rest

So we learn that FGM is practiced in Dagestan. Don’t worry about it though – it’s perfectly healthy.

Ismail Berdiev, the chairman of the North Caucasus Muslim Coordinating Center, told the radio station Govorit Moskva that female circumcision is a healthy, “purely Dagestani custom.”

“As far as I know,” Berdiev explained on air, “it’s done to calm a woman’s zeal somewhat. There’s absolutely no health problem here.”

Ah yes, to calm a woman’s zeal, so that she won’t enjoy sex any more, because if she enjoyed it…well that would be kind of gross, you have to admit. Who needs a woman to enjoy sex? What’s the point of that? It’s the man who’s supposed to enjoy it; all the … Read the rest

The Mormon church is losing people because it’s horrible.

Since November of 2015, when LDS leaders passed an anti-gay policy barring children of married LGBT couples from being baptized, the Mormon church has experienced a steady mass exodus, according to critics of the faith.

The controversial rule, adopted after same-sex marriage became legal in the US, said that if Mormon children of gay parents wanted to be baptized, they would have to denounce same-sex cohabitation and leave their family’s house when they turned 18.

Protests erupted, and within several weeks, Utah attorney Mark Naugle had helped more than 2,600 people file resignation papers.

Family values, eh? Ordering people to denounce and abandon their parents. Nice.

 … Read the rest