Oh the joy of learning at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. How the world opens up before the eager student, how the riches of human knowledge spill out before her excited gaze.

It offers for instance ‘classes in homemaking.’

The academic program, open only to women, includes lectures on laundering stubborn stains and a lab in baking chocolate-chip cookies. Philosophical courses such as “Biblical Model for the Home and Family” teach that God expects wives to submit graciously to their husbands’ leadership.

So that all female students will realize they mustn’t get married? Does it work? What are the stats?

Seminary President Paige Patterson and his wife, Dorothy – who goes by Mrs. Paige Patterson – view the homemaking curriculum

A pleasing fantasy.

[I]t would be a simple matter to send out for professional reinforcements, thus demonstrating to King Abdullah that, whatever the Prince of Wales may have told him in the dunes, our shared values do not, currently, feature male supremacy. Instead of Prince Charles fawning on the airstrip, one pictures, say, Sandi Toksvig, heading a welcoming party composed of adulterers, gays, Jews, Catholics, apostates, immodestly dressed women and a variety of other law-abiding sinners who would be dead, or at least severely incapacitated, if they lived in King Abdullah’s country. After inspecting a battalion of beautifully turned out slags (replacing the Welsh Guards), he and his companions would be driven – by women drivers of Filipina extraction

So as part of this here ‘Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week’ the very scholarly and thoughtful Ann Coulter spoke at USC.

“There’s always a conflict of interest when people who hate America are asked to lead it,” Coulter said about the Democrats’ midterm election victory…Organizers of the week, both at USC and across the country, said the goal of such speeches is to increase discourse on an issue of national importance.

By inviting Ann Coulter? She’s a (bad) stand-up comic; she doesn’t do discourse, she does silly trash-talk.

Though organizers praised Coulter for her brash personality and bold, attention-grabbing statements, some critics say these characteristics are a detriment to promoting thoughtful discourse on controversial issues…Some attendees said Coulter’s polemic remarks are

On the one hand, it’s a very good thing that Cherie Booth QC is saying that culture and religion cannot be used as an excuse for discriminating against women. (Mind you, she could have waited for JS and me to write our book saying that and then used the opportunity to plug our book, but never mind.) On the other hand she says some absurd counter-factual things in the process.

The human rights lawyer, wife of former PM Tony Blair, said all the major world faiths shared “an insistence on the dignity of all God’s people”.

The hell they do. They share the opposite, that’s what they share. Yes, Christianity too – there are places where it decidedly fails to … Read the rest

Check this out.

In the past few years, the students and faculty of Columbia University have found themselves in the midst of a culture war. They’ve seen their Middle East Studies department targeted as “anti-Israel”…And at the start of this school year their own president, Lee Bollinger, seemed to pander to this right-wing pressure by slamming Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the name of “the modern civilized world.”

That’s interesting, isn’t it? It’s in The Nation, of all places. Apparently Esther Kaplan, who wrote a book called With God on Their Side: George Bush and the Christian Right, thinks that it’s ‘right-wing’ to be critical of Ahmadinejad. Because…what? Ahmadinejad is a lefty hero, another Che or perhaps Trotsky?… Read the rest