Teacher tries to teach a lesson on Islam in the Bible Belt. Whoops!

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

A Virginia county closed all of its schools Friday because of intense backlash over a class assignment about Islam, with some parents alleging that their children were being subjected to Muslim indoctrination and educators emphasizing the importance of exposing U.S. students to the world’s fastest-growing religion. 

A high school geography teacher in rural Augusta County asked students to try their hand at writing the shahada, an Islamic declaration of faith, in Arabic calligraphy. The task, community reaction to it, and a sudden influx of outrage from around the country — including angry emails, phone calls and threats to put the teacher’s head on a stake — led the school district to close rather than risk disruption or violence. 

Augusta County Sheriff Randy Fisher said the superintendent and the school board decided to close the 10,000-student school system after district officials and the Riverheads High School teacher who gave the assignment received emails that seemed to increase in volume and vitriol as the week wore on. Most emails and messages assailed the school and the teacher for “indoctrinating” students in Islam, and some referenced violence generally. 

Fisher said he saw messages that called for firing the teacher and putting “her head on a stake.” Photos of beheaded bodies also were sent to the Riverheads principal. In a news release, the superintendent also said people indicated that they were planning protests at school buildings and that “some communications posed a risk of harm to school officials.”

That's right the parents were so afraid that their children were being indoctrinated into a religion associated with terrorism in this country, that they terrorized the superintendent, school officials, and teacher. 

But remember, these are most likely Christians so it doesn't count.

Welcome to Donald Trump's America folks.

Arkansas, Tennessee, and Alabama round out the top three for Black Friday brawls.

Courtesy of WRCB: 

Arkansas and Tennessee top the list for Black Friday fights. Arkansas tops the list at number one, followed by Tennessee and Alabama. Missouri ranks in at number 5. 

Shoppers love saving money, but when it comes to Black Friday, some Midsoutherners go to extreme measures to get those hot items. Experts said there is a way to save money while staying safe.

Yes there is a way to save money and stay safe, DON'T go shopping on Black Friday. (More brawls here.)

Wait until Cyber Monday, that way you still get great deals and you can shop in your pajamas from home.

Who wouldn't rather shop in their pajamas?

Oh wait, I forgot about the Wal-Mart shoppers.

Did anybody else happen to notice that the map up above closely matches this one?

Anybody else completely unsurprised?

Gotta love the bible belt.

Now this is somebody who is desperate to get her message across.

So desperate that more than a dozen bumper stickers were simply not sufficient in explaining that we are all going to Hell.

Mississippi abstinence only sex education course compares girls to dirty peppermint patties. No longer "clean and valuable" after she had been handled.

Courtesy of the LA Times:  

Marie Barnard was delighted when, after decades of silence on the topic, Mississippi passed a law requiring school districts to teach sex education. But the lesson involving the Peppermint Pattie wasn't what she had in mind for her sons. 

The curricula adopted by the school district in Oxford called on students to unwrap a piece of chocolate, pass it around class and observe how dirty it became. 

"They're using the Peppermint Pattie to show that a girl is no longer clean or valuable after she's had sex — that she's been used," said Barnard, who works in public health. "That shouldn't be the lesson we send kids about sex." 

She and other parents lobbied the district to teach about contraception, not just abstinence. After all, as she and other parents noted, 76% of Mississippi teenagers report having sex before the end of high school. 

Mississippi has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country, with 50 births per 1,000 females aged 15 to 19 in 2011 — compared with 31 per 1,000 nationally. A third of all babies born in Mississippi are to teenage mothers. Access to contraceptives is low, especially in some rural areas where drug stores have been known to refuse to sell condoms to minors. 

Once again it is so helpful of religion to forever leave the burden of chastity with the woman, while giving men a free pass.

A girl who engages in consensual sex before marriage, is a dirty piece of mint filled confection, that is now all disgusting and unfit for love. While a man who sticks his willie in every piece of tail that passes his way, is considered experienced and celebrated by his peers.

A boy who has sex becomes a man. A girl who does the same becomes a slut.

In this day and age the hypocrisy is almost impossible to believe, and yet in some communities it as unchanged as it was back in the days when young men bartered with fathers for the virginity of their daughters, as one would barter for a for any other piece of property or livestock.

However there are a valiant few who desperately try to bring the ignorant into the 21st Century with the rest of us.

Sanford Johnson, deputy outreach coordinator for Mississippi First, an education policy group, encountered these values while addressing the school board in Hollandale, a dusty, rural community with a dilapidated downtown of shuttered stores and peeling paint. 

Johnson thought he had made a good case for contraception education when he shared disturbing statistics: The local birthrate was 73 out of 1,000 females between 15 and 19; the national rate is 29.4 per 1,000. 

He encountered the usual gasps of shock when he revealed that the rate of chlamydia, at 1,346.8 per 100,000 people, was nearly double the rest of Mississippi, and approaching triple the U.S. rate. 

But later Johnson got a call from someone who had attended the board meeting — telling him that people who have sex before marriage don't go to heaven. The board voted for abstinence-only. 

 "People who have sex before marriage don't go to heaven."

And that my friends is when you stand up and walk away.

Because despite the rash of teen pregnancies and the chlamydia epidemic there is no hope of convincing these idiots of anything.

For them all they need to know about love, marriage, and sex, is contained in a misogynistic text, written thousands of years ago, by a group of men who clearly feared and despised women. 

Missouri lawmaker proposes legislation that would allow parents of public school students to opt out of classes teaching Evolution. Because you know, who needs science?

Courtesy TPM:  

A Missouri lawmaker has proposed what ranks among the most anti-evolution legislation in recent years, which would require schools to notify parents if "the theory of evolution by natural selection" was being taught at their child's school and give them the opportunity to opt out of the class. 

The bill had its first public hearing Thursday after being introduced in late January. 

State Rep. Rick Brattin (R), who sponsored the bill, told a local TV station last week that teaching only evolution in school was "indoctrination." 

"Our schools basically mandate that we teach one side," he told KCTV. "It is an indoctrination because it is not objective approach."

And as troubling as this is for Missouri schoolchildren, it is even more troubling that similar laws are being introduced all along the Bible Belt.

The bill is one of several anti-evolution proposals that have already appeared in statehouses across the country; the Daily Beast counted four states (Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Virginia) where legislation had been introduced. The proposals would allow for a range of approaches to evolution, from presenting a "debate" over evolution versus creationism to requiring that local school boards allow intelligent design to be included in biology courses.

However Missouri is still in the forefront of sabotaging their children's education.

But Brattin's bill appears to be the only one, and perhaps the first, that would mandate parental notification that their children were being taught evolution in school, the curriculum that most mainstream science teacher groups endorse. 

“It’s an absolute infringement on people’s beliefs,” Brattin told the Kansas City Star of requiring schools to teach evolution. “What’s being taught is just as much faith and, you know, just as much pulled out of the air as, say, any religion."

As scientific investigation provides more and more answers about our origins, and the origins of out planet and universe, we are seeing what can only be defined as a panicked response to somehow preserve the teachings of religion by protecting children from the influence of critical thinking.

In year passed, as many of you here have pointed out, there was NOT this great movement to attack science and it was felt that religion and science could live together in harmony.

However today with the climate change debate, the rise in non-theism, and new discoveries being made, seemingly on a daily basis, that disprove much of what is written in the Bible, there has arisen an orchestrated attack on Evolution specifically, and science in general, that threatens to undermine the very future of our country.

You know what sometimes is not made clear in discussions about Evolution is that human being benefited greatly from its discovery in way that many simply do not understand.

It provided a framework and model that has been used in zoology, botany, biology, medicine, and many other scientific disciplines with great success.

Without Darwin that flu shot we all rush to get every year may not be nearly as effective, we may never have mapped the human genome (Which by the way shows evidence of the continued evolution of humans.), or today it is even giving us new insights into dealing with Alzheimer's.

It is NOT important that every public school pupil have a degree in Evolutionary Biology, but it IS important that they recognize its importance and do not disregard it out of hand simply because it does not comport with their religious beliefs, whatever form those might take.

It may be important to note that there are scientists working in the field of Evolution who come from a background in Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholism, Islamism, Protestantism, and virtually every other religious discipline.

But when they put on their lab coats, they are scientists. And scientists deal with facts.

And so should American school children.