Author: Mark Alexander

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10 Questions to Help Determine if Your Religious Liberty Is Being Threatened

From a great little post over at Alternet:

This simple quiz will let you know if you’re being oppressed.

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to go to a religious service of my own choosing.
B) Others are allowed to go to religious services of their own choosing.

2. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to marry the person I love legally, even though my religious community blesses my marriage.
B) Some states refuse to enforce my own particular religious beliefs on marriage on those two guys in line down at the courthouse.

3. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am being forced to use birth control.
B) I am unable to force others to not use birth control.

4. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to pray privately.
B) I am not allowed to force others to pray the prayers of my faith publicly.

5. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) Being a member of my faith means that I can be bullied without legal recourse.
B) I am no longer allowed to use my faith to bully gay kids with impunity.

6. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to purchase, read or possess religious books or material.
B) Others are allowed to have access books, movies and websites that I do not like.

7. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) My religious group is not allowed equal protection under the establishment clause.
B) My religious group is not allowed to use public funds, buildings and resources as we would like, for whatever purposes we might like.

8. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) Another religious group has been declared the official faith of my country.
B) My own religious group is not given status as the official faith of my country.

9. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) My religious community is not allowed to build a house of worship in my community.
B) A religious community I do not like wants to build a house of worship in my community.

10. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to teach my children the creation stories of our faith at home.
B) Public school science classes are teaching science.

Scoring key:

If you answered “A” to any question, then perhaps your religious liberty is indeed at stake. You and your faith group have every right to now advocate for equal protection under the law. But just remember this one little, constitutional, concept: this means you can fight for your equality—not your superiority.

If you answered “B” to any question, then not only is your religious liberty not at stake, but there is a strong chance that you are oppressing the religious liberties of others. This is the point where I would invite you to refer back to the tenets of your faith, especially the ones about your neighbors.

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Very Good Advice from Fathers to Sons Everywhere

From Tom Matlack at The Good Men Project:

  1. It’s harder to take a punch than to throw one.
  2. Find the people who make you laugh and follow them around like a golden retriever. Laughing is like a vitamin.  You can never get enough of it.
  3. A guy who hugs a lot is comfortable in his own skin.
  4. Read poetry.
  5. There’s nothing wrong with looking at porn, but having sex with someone you care about is a thousand times more fun.
  6. When you feel like crying, for joy or out of pain, let ‘er rip. If you don’t those tears out, they will calcify in your chest and make it harder to love as fully and deeply as you would like to.
  7. Crank the tunes when you have to clean the house.
  8. Look deeply into the eyes of the one you are falling for to get a glimpse of his or her soul.
  9. Spend a chunk of time every year with people who are much less fortunate than you are. It will fill your heart with gratitude.
  10. Never lie about anything really important. The first lie will cause you to have to lie again and again to cover up the truth. And each time you’ll chip away an important piece of yourself.
  11. Find work that makes you happy. If you can change the world in the process all the better.
  12. If you get the chance to travel across the country or across the globe, take it.  You will learn way more from people who are different from you than the ones who are the same.
  13. Doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing.  But you are going to make mistakes. Tons of them. The real question is what you will learn from them.
  14. Don’t be in any rush to get married. Divorce really sucks. A good marriage can start when you’re 21 or 61.
  15. There’s nothing wrong with a Cuban cigar once in a while.
  16. Money and power look good, but they won’t fill your being with joy the way your family will.
  17. If you like guys, I will fight for your ability to have equal rights in every way.
  18. Find a way to move your body that gives you pleasure. You don’t have to be an athlete to be a man, but your body is a temple and you need to care for it, enjoy it, and use it to express yourself.
  19. Drinking can be fun in moderation. Just make sure to ask for help if you find yourself blacking out or doing things you regret.
  20. Radical honesty will get you very far in this world. Most people don’t have the guts to speak their mind, regardless of the consequences.
  21. Always give your spouse birthday presents in bed.
  22. Find a spirituality that you can wear like a loose coat that keeps you warm no matter the weather. God should provide you comfort not make you feel ashamed of yourself.
  23. Sex is great but holding your spouse in the middle of the night is one of the best feelings any guy can have.
  24. Live passionately. Dream big. Don’t back down.
  25. Always remember I love you, no matter what happens. You cannot lose me. I will always be there.
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Douchebag!

I’ve gone from simply disliking Romney to actively loathing him.

Mitt Romney was asked by FOX News anchor Bret Baier about his failure to mention or praise the troops in his speech at the Republican National Convention.

Answered Romney:

“When you give a speech you don’t go through a laundry list, you talk about the things you think are important.”

Romney adds that he did talk about his commitment to a strong military (“He plans to increase military spending by $2.1 trillion over the next ten year,”Think Progress notes): “I didn’t use the word troops. I used the word military. I think they refer to the same thing.”

Uh…no they don’t, Mittens. It’s the same difference between a corporation and the people who work for it. But then again, you don’t see the difference there either.

Asshole.

 

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This is Cool

Wolfram Alpha Can Now Reduce Your Social Life to a Series of Graphs

Facebook is a great place to follow the lives of friends, and family, but it’s also an amazing repository of your personal information. Even casual users would be surprised how much data they have poured into the service over the years, and now you finally have a way to put it into perspective. Wolfram Alpha, the world’s greatest computational knowledge engine, has launched a service that will reduce your Facebook social life to a series of mathematical charts.

To get started just type “Facebook” into the search field, click the analyze button, and create a Wolfram Alpha account. The data gives you a good idea of how much you participate on the service, and will even give you an interesting breakdown of your friends by country, age, and a visualization of how you all know each other.


If you ever wanted to see your entire life broken down into a series of mathematical charts, you owe it to yourself to check this out.

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Speaking of Leaving a Mark…

Fucking brilliant:

“I can assure you that gay people getting married will have zero effect on your life. They won’t come into your house and steal your children. They won’t magically turn you into a lustful cockmonster. They won’t even overthrow the government in an orgy of hedonistic debauchery because all of a sudden they have the same legal rights as the other 90 percent of our population—rights like Social Security benefits, child care tax credits, Family and Medical Leave to take care of loved ones, and COBRA healthcare for spouses and children.

“You know what having these rights will make gays? Full-fledged American citizens just like everyone else, with the freedom to pursue happiness and all that entails. Do the civil-rights struggles of the past 200 years mean absolutely nothing to you? In closing, I would like to say that I hope this letter, in some small way, causes you to reflect upon the magnitude of the colossal foot in mouth clusterfuck you so brazenly unleashed on a man whose only crime was speaking out for something he believed in. Best of luck in the next election; I’m fairly certain you might need it.

“P.S. I’ve also been vocal as hell about the issue of gay marriage so you can take your ‘I know of no other NFL player who has done what Mr. Ayanbadejo is doing’ and shove it in your close-minded, totally lacking in empathy piehole and choke on it. Asshole.” ~ Minnesota Vikings kicker Chris Kluwe, in a letter to Maryland state Rep. Emmett Burns, who has called for sanctions against a Baltimore Ravens player for supporting same-sex marriage.

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Oh Suh-NAP!

This is gonna leave a mark:

“Barney Frank is a distinguished and honorable public servant. He has faced nearly 40 years of unspeakable hatred and persecution for being the most prominent and outspoken openly gay elected official in the country. Regardless of what he has to say about Log Cabin Republicans, the notion that they would suggest a man as brave and upstanding as Congressman Frank is either cowardly or a bully is both deluded and absurd.

“The true bullies are the hate-mongers in the GOP who want to strip us of our rights and shove us back into the closet. And ‘cowardly’? Cowardly is making pathetic excuses for the backward and misguided anti-LGBT policies of your Party. The Log Cabin Republicans are the most weak-kneed, sycophantic apologists I’ve ever encountered. After their dismal performance at the RNC convention driving the GOP platform even farther to the right, they should give back all the money they’ve fleeced from their donors and close the doors.” ~ Jerame Davis, National Stonewall Democrats executive director, via press release, in response to this.