I don’t know what’s worse: The fact that Christian comedian Mike Warnke is badly telling old jokes that he never wrote in the first place… or that he’s telling a fictional story about what Satanists supposedly did to a little girl: Read more
Frank Ancona, the “Imperial Wizard of the Traditional American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,” said something the other day that would make just about anyone cringe. In explaining how his organization wants to “maintain White Supremacy,” he attempted to explain why this doesn’t make the KKK a hate group: “We don’t hate people because of their race,” said Ancona. “We are a Christian organization.” Read more
His questionable decision to debate Creationist Ken Ham notwithstanding, here’s an excellent video of how Bill Nye became “the Science Guy”: Read more
Tonight at 9:00 (ET) on Nightline Prime, ABC will be broadcasting a program about so-called Purity Balls. They’re like debutante balls (gowns and tiaras are everywhere) except that the central event is a virginity pledge that teenage girls swear to God — and to dad. Last fall, the ABC team attended “the Super Bowl of Purity Balls” at the regal Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colorado. There, five dozen fathers signed a purity covenant, promising “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.” But of course it’s really the girls who pledge — abstinence. As the father of two pre-teen kids (both girls), I hope that, when they’re old enough, they’ll be very choosy — that is, discerning — with their sex partners. But I can’t imagine being involved (and invested) in their virginity to the extent that the parents attending the Broadmoor affair are. To each his or her own, but the notion that a young woman is somehow diminished in value once she’s had sex seems pretty misogynistic to me. Read more
Chase Martinson shouldn’t have had any problems when he decided to return to nursing school at Missouri’s Hannibal-LaGrange University after some time off. But there were problems… for two reasons. 1) Hannibal-LaGrange University is a Southern Baptist-affiliated school. 2) Chase came out publicly as gay. Hannibal-LaGrange University can’t handle students who deviate from their student handbook — page 27 of which forbids students from even “appearing” gay. But what makes their bigotry even juicier is how excited they appeared to be to invite Chase back to their school before they found out about his orientation… Read more
Take a look at the faculty members at Cedarville University in Ohio — an Independent Baptist school — and see if you can spot all the female professors in the School of Biblical and Theological Studies. I had to scroll down for a while… but then I found her. Erin Shaw. (Yep, singular. There’s just the one.) I don’t have any reason to condemn her, but I do want to point out that she appears to be the only faculty member in the department with no Ph.D. or professional teaching experience. There used to be credentialed women in the department’s faculty but most of them left when there was a shakeup in the administration and a new regime took over. Why did they all leave? We didn’t really know because the school made them sign confidentiality statements, but I think we have the answer now. School officials are putting restrictions on the students who can take her classes: Read more
You may have seen this Jesus Wheel floating around on your Facebook page courtesy of the obnoxious Jesus Daily page: @TraceyRemix decided to make a response image that includes most of the reactions I had to the original. Especially “Cancer”: Read more
As Westboro Baptist Church members — the handful who are still there — protested outside a Lorde concert tonight, a small group staged a counter-protest with this lovely sign: Read more
