Timeflyer
Timeflyer's JournalSo it's our fault--we are the "they" that tried to kill him, according to Florida Man.
Just got this piece of propaganda from Greg Steube, a gun-humping, useless, MAGAty Florida representative for the 17th district.
"July 14, 2024
Dear Floridian:
I know many of us are deeply worried about President Trump after the horrific attempt to take his life last night at a rally. First, they tried to jail him and now they’ve tried to kill him. This is a sad, sad moment for our country. I continue to pray for President Trump, his family, and everyone in Pennsylvania affected by this senseless violence. Evil will not win, this is America."
Yeah, Greg, ridiculously lax gun regulations and violent rhetoric from the MAGA right had nothing to do with this. Let's vote out this POS, Florida.
Satanic Temple set to establish school clubs in Florida
C.A. Bridges
USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA
On Monday, a new law allowing volunteer chaplains in Florida public schools took effect. The Satanic Temple was ready.
“The Satanic Temple’s chaplains can now serve in Florida’s public schools, thanks to Governor Ron De-Santis!” the church posted Tuesday on its social media accounts.
DeSantis said that would not be happening. “We’re not playing those games in Florida,” DeSantis said when he signed the bill in April. “That is not a religion.”
The new law was one of nearly 180 new Florida laws that took effect Monday. Under HB 931, volunteer school chaplains may “provide support, services, and programs to students as assigned by the district school board or charter school governing board.” Parents must consent and may choose from a publicly available list of chaplains and their religious affiliations, if any.
What is the School Chaplains bill?
HB 931/SB 7044 authorizes school districts and charter schools to allow volunteer school chaplains “to provide support, services, and programs to students as assigned by the district school board or charter school governing board.” It also requires districts to screen volunteers and requires parental consent before a student may utilize their services. Parents may choose from the list, which must be posted by each district with the volunteer names and religious affiliations.
Assorted amendments to ban school districts from preferring specific religious affiliations, require sexual harassment and assault prevention training, require chaplains to be from faiths recognized by the U.S. Department of Defense and hold a Master’s or Bachelor’s degree or higher in a theological field, or to require an oversight committee and establish a complaint and termination process all failed or were withdrawn in the House.
However, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits the establishment or promotion of any specific religion. That’s where The Satanic Temple comes in. “Any opportunity that exists for ministers or chaplains in the public sector must not discriminate based on religious affiliation,” The Satanic Temple’s director of ministry, who goes by Penemue Grigori, said in an email to the USA TODAY NETWORK - Florida while the bill was being deliberated. “Our ministers look forward to participating in opportunities to do good in the community, including the opportunities created by this bill, right alongside the clergy of other religions.”
The church — which is recognized by the IRS as a tax-exempt religious organization — regularly fights for religious freedom and the First Amendment by inserting itself into any rules or laws that allow religion into the government or public sector.
“Are you a Florida parent interested in learning more about The Satanic Temple’s chaplains serving in public schools?” the church’s social media posts asked. “Sign up for more information: https://tinyurl.com/thanksron” A similar bill in Utah, HB 514, failed this year. Georgia’s SB 379, which also failed, would have allowed volunteer chaplains to work alongside or replace school counselors but specifically defined “chaplain” as not a person “who is a satanist.”
What is the Satanic Temple? Founded in 2013 in Salem, Massachusetts, by Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jerry, The Satanic Temple gained national attention after holding a rally in Tallahassee praising then-Gov. Rick Scott for signing a bill the previous year allowing public school students to initiate prayer and read inspirational messages at assemblies and sporting events.
The Satanic Temple counters faith-based school programs in public schools nationwide with its After School Satan Clubs, which offer science projects, community service projects, arts and crafts, puzzles and games with what the organization calls a focus on rationalism. “The After School Satan Club does not believe in introducing religion into public schools and will only open a club if other religious groups are operating on campus,” the church’s website says. And they sue to stay there.
The Satanic Temple also has taken stands against hate groups, corporal punishment in schools, abortion limits and other issues it feels are based on evangelical Christianity, often using images and references that seem to mock religious beliefs. The church uses a cartoonish version of the Christian devil in its logo as a symbol of rebellion and intellectual questioning, although it specifically rejects the concept of Satan as a supernatural being.
The Temple promotes seven tenets focusing on compassion, empathy, personal freedom, bodily autonomy, scientific facts, and the struggle for justice. The organization also offers support groups for recovery from addiction without including religion; exposes malpractice and pseudoscience; runs an anti-corporal punishment in schools campaign; and provides telehealth support for reproductive information nationwide and telehealth abortion services to New Mexico.
The Satanic Temple in Florida
The Satanic Temple has had a presence in the Sunshine State after the Tallahassee rally. The Satanic Temple’s petition in 2013 to put up a display in the Florida Capitol Rotunda — which already featured Christmas displays, a menorah, and a Festivus pole made out of empty Pabst Blue Ribbon cans — was denied. Their second attempt the next year was approved and they mounted their own: a diorama of an angel falling from the sky into the flames of hell, underneath the words “Happy Holidays from the Satanic Temple.”
Book bans, again. Little Big Brother DeSantis is watching those dangerous government schools and libraries.
DeSantis admin doubles down on school book bans
Douglas Soule USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is doubling down on its position that books can be removed from school libraries solely because the government disagrees with them.
“(We) maintain the position that the removal of material from public school libraries is government speech for which it has the complete discretion and freedom to speak through the removal of speech with which it disapproves,” wrote attorneys for various Gov. Ron DeSantis education appointees in a Thursday court filing.
As revealed by the USA TODAY Network – Florida, the state has made the same argument over the last year to counter lawsuits filed over the local school district removals of books with LGBTQ themes.
In a similar vein, another attorney for DeSantis education appointees recently told a federal appeals court that what public university professors say in classrooms is government speech and therefore can be censored by the state.
The federal lawsuit prompting the latest government speech assertion was filed last month by a trio of public school student mothers who accuse Florida’s top education officials of discriminating against them and others opposed to the surge of book removals seen across the state.
In trying to get that lawsuit thrown out, Florida’s attorneys said that since removals are protected government speech, the public can’t experience “harm or concrete injury” over those removals and therefore can’t sue.
It shows the state is only ramping up arguments that have alarmed First Amendment experts, with some accusing them of being authoritarian. And it marks yet another case in Florida that could have big effects on First Amendment law across the nation.
As mentioned by the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, government speech doctrine is relatively new and “not always precise,” with most of the core cases on it coming in the last couple of decades.
“Under the government speech doctrine, the government has its own rights as speaker, immune from free speech challenges,” the center says on its website. “It can assert its own ideas and messages without being subject to First Amendment claims of viewpoint discrimination.”
While the U.S. Supreme Court has not always ruled in favor of government speech arguments, it said in 2015 that Texas could refuse to allow Confederate flag specialty license plates because they represented government speech. Justices said six years before that a city could refuse to put a monument in a public park for the same reason.
Latest legal round in Little Big Brother DeSatan's war on education.
Douglas Soule, Tallahassee Democrat, USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments over a key provision of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ much-touted 'Stop WOKE Act.'
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – An attorney representing education officials appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis late last week told a federal appeals court that Florida lawmakers, if they so choose, can prohibit professors from criticizing the governor in the classroom.
'In the classroom, the professor’s speech is the government’s speech, and the government can restrict professors on a content-wide basis and restrict them from offering viewpoints that are contrary,' said Charles Cooper of the Cooper & Kirk law firm, responding to a judge posing that scenario.
The remarks came during oral arguments before a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals over a key provision of DeSantis’ much-touted 'Stop WOKE Act,' which limits discussion of race, gender and other topics in state university classrooms.
That provision was blocked by Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker of Tallahassee, who called it 'positively dystopian.' The circuit court last year denied the state’s request to undo the block before it reached a final decision on the case.
Last week’s argument, held in Miami, focused on the line between academic freedom and the state government’s ability to control institutions it funds and oversees. 'Let’s say that conspiracy theories were taking hold, and there were a group of professors who were teaching that the moon landing never happened or that 9/11 was an inside job,' said Judge Britt Grant, appointed by former President Donald Trump. 'Is there nothing, in your view, that the Florida Legislature could do about that?'
'That would be within the province of the university, first and foremost,' responded attorney Leah Watson of the American Civil Liberties Union, representing Florida professors challenging the law. She’s part of a legal team with the ACLU of Florida, NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Ballard Spahr law firm.
Attorney Greg Greubel of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said in response to the same question: 'You can’t censor your way to freedom, and there are a lot of classes in public universities that teach conspiracy theories so that students can understand the theories behind them and argue against them.'
The law in question, which was signed by DeSantis, says it’s discrimination to 'subject any student or employee to training or instruction that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates or compels' them to believe a list of eight things, including that they should bear personal responsibility for historic wrongs or feel guilt because of their race, color, sex or national origin.
Grant pushed back on Gruebel’s point by saying that such instruction on conspiracy theories was different than endorsing those theories, but he counted that the passive way the statute was written makes its applicability broader than that.
This is not the only provision of the 'Stop WOKE Act' that’s been challenged. Several months ago, the 11th Circuit upheld a decision blocking a different key provision of the law that restricted businesses’ diversity practices and trainings. But that hasn’t stopped the state from still targeting such practices. For example, Attorney General Ashley Moody announced last month that her office had filed a state complaint over Starbucks’ diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
"When Religion Hurts You: Healing from religious trauma and the impact of High-Control Religion," by Laura E. Anderson,
When Religion Hurts You, by Laura E. Anderson, PhD, Brazos Press, 2023.For those hurt by their exposure to a religion, and for those who want to understand the thinking of people who want turn the United States into a Christian theocracy.
“(RNS) — Raised in an evangelical church she now describes as a “dumpster fire” of fundamentalist beliefs, Laura Anderson’s terror of hell kept her up at night as a 4-year-old. Her insomnia was less about hell itself and more about the fear of being separated from her family if Jesus came back. So she’d lie awake, picturing an image of Jesus dying on the cross, hoping it would guarantee salvation.
Decades later, long after her sleeping patterns had regulated, she suddenly suffered from severe insomnia again — this time after she’d come to reject the idea of hell.
“Because of the way I had embodied those messages about the consequences of going to hell, my body started to panic again, because I didn’t have this assurance of salvation,” Anderson explained to Religion News Service…
Anderson gives language for and insights about this under-researched form of trauma and invites readers to take part in the ongoing process of healing.” (from Religion News Service)
"When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the impact of High-Control Religion," by Laura E. Anderson,
When Religion Hurts You, by Laura E. Anderson, , Brazos Press, 2023.For those hurt by their exposure to a religion, and for those who want to understand the thinking of people who want turn the United States into a Christian theocracy.
“(RNS) — Raised in an evangelical church she now describes as a “dumpster fire” of fundamentalist beliefs, Laura Anderson’s terror of hell kept her up at night as a 4-year-old. Her insomnia was less about hell itself and more about the fear of being separated from her family if Jesus came back. So she’d lie awake, picturing an image of Jesus dying on the cross, hoping it would guarantee salvation.
Decades later, long after her sleeping patterns had regulated, she suddenly suffered from severe insomnia again — this time after she’d come to reject the idea of hell.
“Because of the way I had embodied those messages about the consequences of going to hell, my body started to panic again, because I didn’t have this assurance of salvation,” Anderson explained to Religion News Service…
Anderson gives language for and insights about this under-researched form of trauma and invites readers to take part in the ongoing process of healing.” (from Religion News Service
Documentary "Preconceived" about 'crisis pregnancy centers'--scary, infuriating.
These fake "medical clinics" lie to vulnerable patients and do anything to convince the woman not to seek an abortion. This includes promises of help with things like housing after the baby is born--empty promises. They also collect confidential patient info and store in central data storage sites run by anti-abortion advocacy groups like Care Net and Heartbeat International. The person who comes to the 'clinic' can then be traced in future.
If we don't vote like our rights depend on it this election, the Extreme Right will make sure our daughters don't have those rights for generations. They have been developing infrastructures to infiltrate policy, medicine, culture, and take away our freedoms for decades (since they realized that racial segregation was a losing issue for churches seeking money and power).
Watched documentary "Preconceived" about 'crisis pregnancy centers,'--scary, upsetting and infuriating.
These fake "medical clinics" lie to vulnerable patients and do anything to convince the woman not to seek an abortion. This includes promises of help with things like housing after the baby is born--empty promises. They also collect confidential patient info and store in central data storage sites run by anti-abortion advocacy groups like Care Net and Heartbeat International. The person who comes to the 'clinic' can then be traced in future.
If we don't vote like our rights depend on it this election, the Extreme Right will make sure our daughters don't have those rights for generations. They have been developing infrastructures to infiltrate policy, medicine, culture, and take away our freedoms for decades (since they realized that racial segregation was a losing issue for churches seeking money and power).
"Motel of the Mysteries" by David Macauley, 1979. Anthropology, humor.
Love JudiLynn's posts about new science discoveries, and especially her anthropology tidbits. The latest, about the discovery of the burial site of a Neolithic "mayor" reminded me of this '70s book. Speculation about the lives of ancient people is fascinating, and in this humor classic it's hilarious. What will future humans make of the remains of our civilization? Illustrations based on photos from discoveries of Tut's tomb and excavations of Troy are wondrously funny. The picture of a assistant modeling a toilet seat necklace and a "sanitized for your protection" headdress will stay in your head for 6,800 years.
The Praying Lady is preaching to the Sarasota School Bd.--look out, you heathens and/or LGBTQ folks!
The Praying Lady who shows up to get the public schools right with god is spreading her hateful, divisive biblical spew right now at the Sarasota FL School Board meeting during public comments. She's a Moms for Bigotry, Proud Boys loving piece of work. Her topic--Genesis ch. 2, verse 18 for those who want to follow along and hear why god created Eve from Adam's rib and the country is going to hell because 1% of the population is something she hates who are LGBTQ and not ashamed. Or something.
Someone suggested attending the meeting with a whoopie cushion under a loose shirt, to accompany her preachifying. She does this at every damn meeting! For those who can stand it, I'll try to link to the meeting at some point (technologically impaired though I am).
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