Raw Story reported on May 22:

Four homeschooled brothers pleaded guilty Thursday to molesting their younger sister from the time she was 4 years old until she was almost 15 – and their parents and two other brothers still face charges related to the case.

…

Eric Jackson, then 25, told authorities that he and all five of his brothers had sexually abused their younger sister for a decade, and authorities say their parents knew but did nothing to stop the abuse.

An elder at Hope Baptist Church, which Jackson and another brother attended, compared the pattern of abuse to other “horrible” sins such as adultery and homosexuality.

No; dead wrong. “Homosexuality” is neither a “sin” nor a crime … Read the rest

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Via Taslima – a horrific gang-rape in a bus in Dhaka.

Police say the woman was waiting at a bus stop for a ride home after work on Thursday night when a minibus stopped in front of her and two men forced her aboard. They and three other men inside the bus took turns raping her for an hour and a half while the bus slowly drove around the Jamuna Future Park area in northeast Dhaka.

Inspired by the Delhi gang rape in 2012, no doubt, the one in which the rapists pulled the victim’s intestines out before they threw her and the guy who was with her off the bus.

The woman’s sister told reporters that the family

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I saw most of this the other day: Star Talk hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, talking to a Jesuit priest and playing sections from a taped interview he did with Richard Dawkins. (There was also a comedian but he didn’t get to contribute much.) It was pretty entertaining.

One bit was very funny, when Dawkins was explaining something about why he challenges religion or some such thing, and he said he “good-naturedly ridicules” people’s odd beliefs. I burst out laughing at that, and laughed some more when Tyson gently said the people might disagree about the “good-natured” part. Dawkins chuckled amiably, but…you could see that no dent had been made.

So I guess that really is how he sees … Read the rest

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I’m seeing people asking a lot of very strange questions about why anyone should care that Josh Duggar groped his younger sisters and his family covered it up and did nothing about it.

Are they serious? We should care because the Duggars think and say they are better than everyone who doesn’t think like them, and they have a very large public megaphone – and may still have it if TLC’s cancellation of their show turns out to be temporary. We should care because Josh Duggar was a higher-up in the reactionary homophobic Family Research Council until he resigned two days ago because the truth about his past came to light.

We should care because the Duggars are reactionary theocratic … Read the rest

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Wtf?

… Read the rest

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Lizzie Dearden at the Independent has been reading IS propaganda so that you don’t have to.

A jihadi bride whose husband took a Yazidi girl as a slave has claimed sex with kidnapped women is never rape because it is an Islamic practice inspired by the Prophet himself.

Well that’s where she’s wrong. The prophet himself was not incapable of rape just because he was “the prophet” after all. If the prophet told men they could rape women captured in battle then he was telling them they could rape, end of story. It doesn’t magically become not-rape just because this one super-special guy endorsed it.

The article, by “Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajirah”, appears in the latest issue of Isis propaganda magazine

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Now for a downer; sorry.

Heather Hironimus has been forced (by a threat of prison) to sign the permission slip for her four-year-old son to get his penis snipped against his will.

With handcuffs on her wrists and tears rolling down her cheeks, Heather Hironimus looked up to the courtroom ceiling, briefly clasped her hands together in prayer, and finally picked up her attorney’s pen.

The 31-year-old West Boynton [mother] — jailed since May 14 for defying a judge’s custody order and refusing to let her 4 1/2-year-old son be circumcised — gave her consent to the procedure wanted by the boy’s [father], Dennis Nebus, of Boca Raton.

Because of the boy’s age, the snipping requires general anesthesia – which … Read the rest

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The Recorder reads the result.

RTÉ News retweeted
Conor Barrins @ConorBarrins 18 minutes ago
#MarRef passes

RTÉ News retweeted
Martina Fitzgerald @MartinaFitzg 18 minutes ago
Dublin castle erupts with the national anthem #rtenews #marref

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And it’s official official at last – they had to wait for Cork to finish counting, while all of Twitter yelled at Cork to hurry up.

• 18:55 Ireland becomes the first country to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote.
• 18:51 Returning Officer Ríona Ní Fhlanghaile declares that Ireland has passed the same-sex marriage referendum by 1,201,607 votes (62.1%) to 734,300 (37.9%).
• 18:35 The end is nigh! The returning officer for Cork North West/South West/East says two of three results are with Dublin Castle and the third is on the way in minutes.

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

Party time at Dublin Castle:

 … Read the rest

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RTÉ has called it.

RTÉ News‏@rtenews
Ireland’s same-sex marriage referendum has been passed

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God has tweeted about the vote.

God ‏@TheTweetOfGod 2h2 hours ago
Dublin, if this doesn’t tell you My opinion nothing will. #MarRef

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RTÉ’s live count.

17:13 Result for Dublin North: Yes 72.61% No 27.39%. That is 34,494 Yes votes and 13,009 No votes. A margin of 21,485. The turnout is 65.83%.

17:02 Result from Dublin North Central: Yes 68.95% No 31.05%. That is 25,382 Yes votes and 11,431 No votes. A margin of 13,951. The turnout is 68.85%.

Result from Dublin Central: Yes 72.37% No 27.63%. That is 23,861 Yes votes and 9,108 No votes. A margin of 14,753. The turnout is 57.98%.

16:51 Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said the social revolution that Minister Leo Varadkar spoke about earlier has been going on for some time. He said the Catholic Church needs a reality check.

In so many … Read the rest

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