Rachel Ford is a programmer, and since 8:00 to 5:00 doesn't provide enough opportunity to bask in screen glare, she writes in her spare time. She was raised a very fundamentalist Christian, but eventually "saw the light." Rachel's personal blog is Rachel's Hobbit Hole, where she discusses everything from Tolkien to state politics.
Ted Cruz has made no secret of his religious fervor or political ambition during his campaign. His election to the presidency would be, to use his own words, “the Body of Christ ris[ing] up to pull us back from the abyss.” The good news for Cruz is that it’s not just the Body of Christ that’s pulling for him. Apparently, he’s been chosen to represent the Face of God to the country, too. And, no, it wasn’t Cruz channeling God’s divine intentions for him this time. It was his wife, Heidi. She said as much in an interview with radio host Vince Coakley: Read more
It was one of those unusual stories out of the animal kingdom that seemed to elicit a reaction of awwww from everybody: A Siberian tiger at Russia’s Primorsky Safari Park befriended a goat back in November. The goat, Timur, had been intended as food for the tiger, Amur, but won the big cat over with a show of courage when he … took over the enclosure at a safari park near Vladivostok, forcing the tiger to sleep on the roof of his own lean-to. The media was soon full of footage of the two playing together, and Timur’s fans have even begun a campaign to elect him to parliament, arguing that he would be braver and more honest than current MPs. Read more
Leviticus 19:11 makes clear: “Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.” There’s quite a bit of the Bible that conservative Christian activists tend to leave out, but Biblical prohibitions against lying are routinely given short shrift by those intent on seeing God’s will done on Earth. We don’t have to look far for examples of it — from Christians arguing that LGBT people are predators to politicians pretending that being gay is a choice, these lies are common. The Washington Post has a good look at another popular outlet for faith-based lying: the abortion debate, and the notoriously deceptive idea of “crisis pregnancy centers.” Reporter Petula Dvorak examines the work of one Virginia activist, Pat Lohman, in particular. Read more
It’s one of those popular but illogical “gotchas” of the conservative repertoire: You must “tolerate” intolerance or you’re not truly tolerant. This is illogical because it suggests an unattainable, self-defeating view of tolerance that does not at all resemble actual tolerance (or how the real world operates). Like a society that abhors violence, but allows that violence in self-defense as a valid means of maximizing non-violence, a society that values tolerance must refuse to support intolerance if it wishes to remain tolerant. Accepting intolerance isn’t a form of tolerance; it’s the downfall of tolerance. Anti-abortion website LifeSiteNews has a piece, purportedly written by “a Christian kid” who prefers to remain anonymous for “fear of retaliation,” devoting a good deal of time to pushing this line of thought. He says that efforts to protect gay students from intolerant Christians are themselves intolerant of people like him. Read more
