It’s hard not to notice that between the depressing images of the tornado-torn Mid-West/South and the President playing ping-pong with a clumsy British Prime-minister, that Sarah Palin is gaining political momentum once again. Logical deduction would attribute this re-surfacing in the media to the up-coming 2012 elections. It is a very real possibility that Sarah Palin will be running for president.

Why does this bother me so much? Perhaps that out of all of the leaders we could choose from, Palin represents a contrived regression to a time that could no longer exist and it is doubtful it ever even existed in the first place. Reactionaries of this kind are always slinging phrases like back to the good ol’ days but if one thinks for a minute, one would realize that if the good ol’ days were really that great, wouldn’t today be a good ol’ day?

Also, she claims to be an advocate of (ehem) New Femenism which states something along the lines of:
“Together, the pro-woman, pro-life sisterhood is telling the young women of America that they are capable of handling an unintended pregnancy and still pursue a career and an education. Strangely, many feminists seem to want to tell these young women that they’re NOT capable, that you CAN’T give your child life and still pursue your dreams. The message is: “Women, you are not strong enough or smart enough to do both. You are not capable.”

The NEW feminism is telling women they are capable and strong. An if keeping a child isn’t possible, adoption is a beautiful choice. It’s about empowering women to make REAL CHOICES, not forcing them to accept false ones. It’s about compassion and letting these scared young women know that there will be some help there for them to raise their children in those less-than-ideal circumstances.

I believe this so strongly because I’ve been there. I never planned on being the mother of a son with special needs. I thought, “God will never give me something I can’t handle.”

Disregarding the religious hocus-pocus at the end there, this viewpoint targets pro-life advocates as those who wish to strip women of their rights because having an abortion apparently makes someone weak.

…I’ll say having an abortion requires a lot of courage; terrorism is scary.

What is even more appalling is that someone who claims to be a feminist would say that even if a woman was raped, the resulting pregnancy doesn’t warrant an abortion.

“There’s no better training ground for politics than motherhood. At one point during the 2006 general election, motherhood became the focus of a unique line of questioning. In my responses to a series of debate questions on abortion, I remained consistent and sincere, explaining how personal and sensitive the issue is and that good people can disagree.

But the debate moderator decided to personalize his hypotheticals with a series of “what if…” questions:

Q: If a woman were, say, raped…

A: I would choose life.

Q: If your daughter were pregnant…

A: Again, I would choose life.”

Q: If your teenage daughter got pregnant…

A: I’d counsel a young parent to choose life & consider adoption.

I calmly repeated my answers to all o his “what-ifs,” then looked pointedly to my right and my left, to one opponent, then the other. Then I returned to the moderator and said, “I’m confident you’ll be asking the other candidates these same questions, right?” Of course, he didn’t.

ooooowwwwhhhh 4chan comics. True to life.

actlikehumans:

Looks like tomorrow will just be another Sunday - rapturesqe until noon.

-Act Like Humans

Perhaps one of the most annoying hot-button issues to me is the debate on whether or not creationism or intelligent design should be taught along-side evolutionary biology as an alternative theory for the origin of life on planet Earth. Annoying because evolutionary biology is a science, whereas creationism is not.

What makes evolutionary biology different from the other sciences? Perhaps because it is the most corrosive idea to religion we know of today. It is not really a matter of which theory is right or not (though it should be obvious). It is the idea that if children are educated about evolutionary biology, their parents believe their children will lose their faith.

First- If your and your child are truly religiously devout and pious, then hearing a theory that doesn’t correlate with your faith should not change what you believe. If it does, then perhaps you never had any real faith in the first place.

Second- It is not the state’s obligation to teach your child about your beliefs. If a religious parent wants their child to share the same religion, it is the parent’s duty to instill that in the child. The same argument for creationism could be used to say that since Muslim children attend American schools, Islamic beliefs should also be taught to all of the children attending. If this were the case, parents of any other faith would be very, very unhappy.

 But let’s not be hostile. I am not ideologically opposed to teaching religion in schools, but it should not be grouped together with any science. Perhaps Christian Studies can be an elective at public schools along with Islamic Studies or Introduction to Taoism et cetra. Perhaps the best solution for religious parents who want their children to learn about their religion at a school instead of at home or church is to send them to a private religious school or even just to simply home-school them.

The reasoning that we are a Christian Nation and therefore we should teach Christian ideals in public schools will ultimately shoot Christians in the foot when the majority of the country converts to a more convenient religion.

As one might deduce from the photo of the gentleman pictured above, and the title of my page, I am both a proud Atheist and a proud member of the armed services. But neither of which comprise my entire identity.

An identity is not something that can really be explained accurately. Only experienced. It is one of the three biggest issues that create the monsters that live inside us. It can’t simply be explained by a person’s job or occupation because though a woman may be proud to be a mother, that is not entirely who she is. (Maybe that is not as true as I wish it was). Race, creed, gender, occupation, economic status are all identifying features on paper but they don’t necessarily define who a person is.
So what is identity? We can’t really figure that out by one conversation with a person, or reading a blog or facebook bio (if anybody besides myself actually does that). None of the superficial details I listed above really define a person because those are things that only exist because we say they do. Obviously we can’t rely on how a person acts in reality because we see them bound by their social constraints, such as resisting the urge to steal in fear of being arrested.

Identity is something we can only figure out for ourselves. But few of us can actually do that because it involves asking ourselves uncomfortable questions and answering them objectively.

This is what I live for.