Good Baptist Boys Don’t Masturbate — Oh Yes, They Do!

found online by Raymond

 
From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

People raised in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches have heard countless sermons on what the Bible says about sex. Teenagers are warned about the dangers of petting, and many IFB church forbid unmarrieds from having any physical contact with each other. Young men are characterized as weak horn-dogs and young women are viewed as gatekeepers who are responsible for any untoward sexual advances made by sexually aware boys. Young women are given strict orders concerning how to dress and behave to ward off church boys from having sex with them. One thing is certain: if a young IFB woman has sex with a boy, it is almost always her fault.

IFB churches often have lengthy and complex rules that are used to keep unmarrieds from having sex. These rules follow young adults to the IFB colleges they attend. Here we have institutions filled with eighteen- to twenty-five-year-old men and women who, with hormones raging, are expected to refrain from physical contact with the opposite sex. This includes: no holding hands, no kissing, no hugging, no putting one’s arm around another, or sitting too closely to someone of the opposite sex. My wife and I attended Midwestern Baptist College in the 1970s. We were expected to maintain a six-inch distance from each other at all times. Even after we married, we were expected to refrain from public displays of affection lest we cause unmarried dorm students to “sin.”

One would think that IFB pastors and college leaders would approve of masturbation as a way of dealing with pent-up sexual frustration. Unfortunately, masturbation is also a sin. As an IFB teenager, I heard pastors who warned church teens about the dangers of masturbation, including, — oh yes they did! — warning that masturbation will make you blind. Now lest you think it’s just crazy IFB preachers who have a problem with masturbation, consider this quote by Evangelical pastor Mark Driscoll:

First, masturbation can be a form of homosexuality because it is a sexual act that does not involve a woman. If a man were to masturbate while engaged in other forms of sexual intimacy with his wife then he would not be doing so in a homosexual way. However, any man who does so without his wife in the room is bordering on homosexuality activity, particularly if he’s watching himself in a mirror and being turned on by his own male body.

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Spoofing the Readers

found online by Raymond

 
From our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:

21 hours ago
Via Phil comes word that it’s possible to put together a wearable piece of kit that will negate facial recognition. It can possibly make the facial recognition gizmos think you’re someone else. The attack on facial recognition is invisible to the naked eye and, if tuned right, can spoof the machines into thinking you’re someone else.

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There Are More Democrats Than Republicans In The U.S.

found online by Raymond

 
From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

It has been said that a large turnout benefits Democrats. That is true. It is true because there are more Democrats (50%) among registered voters than Republicans (42%).

So, how is it that Republicans have done so well in the last couple of off-year elections (2010 and 2014)? They did well because their voters went to the polls and too many Democrats didn’t bother to vote.

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March, NRA, Trump, Bolton, KY Teachers, Baby Boomers – Ugh

Susan Boyle is a Fraud

From the Archives:
Talking with a friend about intrinsic human worth, I was reminded of this piece from April, 2009

Is anyone in the US, or our once estranged mother Britain, so cloistered as to have missed Susan Boyle and her sudden collision with fame?

The matronly woman in her thrift shop dress and unkempt appearance seemed to the audience like a comedy act. The snickers were a manifestation of what may be a universal urge to revert to childhood superiority. Lets make fun of Susie Simple. The judges were bored. And then she sang a song so beautiful and powerfully sad, that the momentarily stunned assembly went berserk in adoration. She is a YouTube sensation.

What captivates her huge and and growing following is the contrast between expectation and result. Her biography amplifies the contrast. She was the youngest of nine children, growing up with a learning disability caused by oxygen deprivation at birth. She was odd looking to her classmates and had a hard time understanding school lessons, and so they made fun of her.

You can hear more than vocal talent as she speaks of her childhood. “The ones who were mean to me are now nice to me,” she said in a television interview. The statement is plain, and the context subtle, but it carries the pain of childhood torment. Childhood torment graduated to eventual adult eccentricity. One reviewer still jeers at this “unkempt cat-lady-person.”

Childhood pain so often transmutes into an adulthood path. The fork in the road offered by the world goes to bitterness or to selflessness. She cared for her ailing mother until death finally separated them. Her mom was 91. She has been singing in her church for years. She lives alone.

Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune remarks on the eerie resemblance between Susan Boyle and another woman she knows. “… unmarried, unemployed, overweight, bushy-browed, wiry-haired, eccentric. If you said frumpy, I would resent it but I would understand.” Schmidt’s sister also has a learning disability and knows what it is like to be an object of derision. The difference? Her sister is not redeemed by any talent that is recognizable to a mass audience. And so she remains unvalued to most.

We all know folks who would fit some sort of variation of that description, folks who carry the pain of rejection from the cradle to the grave. It is easy to talk of judging a book by its cover in retrospect, after some aspect of hidden content is added to the cover. The lesson is unlearned. Human value is still not intrinsic, but rather achieved by attribute or earned by talent.

Susan Boyle is presented to us as a broken down reject, a castaway bit of humanity, who suddenly revealed a reason for us to value her after all. An ugly duckling turned beautiful swan.

Susan Boyle is a fraud. For she was beautiful all the time.

Thank You, Gun Bullies, for Proving Our Point

found online by Raymond

 
From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

I’ve looked into their eyes at protests.

I’ve listened to them dispense filth at campaign rallies.
I’ve watched them leverage megachurch pulpits and political seats and social media platforms.

They’ve been helping me.
They’ve been making it impossible to forget why I feel the way I feel about them and people like them owning weapons.

Sometimes they’re anonymous—unleashing their verbal venom from behind the protective wall of fake Twitter handles and bot accounts.

Sometimes they’re professional browbeaters like Dana Loesch and James Woods and Wayne LaPierre and Ben Shapiro; siccing their massive followers on grieving teenagers and distraught parents and mom’s activist groups.

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I Hope the Kids Will Be Alright

found online by Raymond

 
From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

The March For Our Lives march/movement has gotten a very special response from pro-gun RW voices–personal attacks against the leaders of the movement, who also happen to be kids who have endured a traumatic event in the form of the school shooting, and are not just working through the grieving process of having lost people, but doing so with courage, thoughtfulness and purpose in a very public way.

Some of these wretched excuses for public comment, such as these comments put out by an NRA spokesperson:

“To all the kids from Parkland getting ready to use your First Amendment to attack everyone else’s Second Amendment at your march on Saturday, I wish a hero like Blaine Gaskill had been at Marjory Douglas High School last month, because your classmates would still be alive and no one would know your names, because the media would have completely and utterly ignored your story, the way they ignored his,” Noir said.

…treat these young people as if they are opportunists who were just looking for the right occasion–like the murder of their friends–to become “famous”. (The individual, Blaine Gaskill, did not actually stop the shooter at Great Mills High School, it turns out–and the presence of resource officers don’t always act as a deterrent to the murder-minded, because individuals who intend to kill people don’t necessarily seek out “gun-free zones”–they seek out the people they mean to kill, and often have no expectation of their own survival.) It’s fine to wish someone had stopped Nikolas Cruz before he murdered 17 people, but it’s something else to suggest this tragic event simply gave these young activists a “story” or that the media gave them a platform that they have no right to. What happened was tragic, it was their experience, and it is their right to tell their own story, and not have it taken away from them because it doesn’t agree with someone else’s political views.

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N.R.A. Proposes Second Armed Teacher in Every Classroom

found online by Raymond

 
From the Borowitz Report:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Hours after an armed teacher in a Northern California classroom fired a gun and injured a student, the head of the National Rifle Association proposed placing a second armed teacher in every classroom, to shoot the first armed teacher before he or she can do harm.

“Had there been a second armed teacher in the classroom to shoot the first armed teacher, this regrettable incident would never have occurred,” Wayne LaPierre said.

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Is Science Catching Up to the Objectivist Ethics?

found online by Raymond

 
From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

An interesting article appeared in the Washington Post. In Being empathetic is good, but it can hurt your health, Jennifer Breheny Wallace reports:

Empathy — the ability to tune into and share another person’s emotion from their perspective — plays a crucial role in bringing people together. It’s the joy you feel at a friend’s wedding or the pain you experience when you see someone suffering.

It’s an essential ingredient for building intimacy in relationships, says Robin Stern, associate director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. “When someone feels seen and heard by you,” she says, “they begin to trust you.”

But this seemly positive emotion can also have a downside, particularly if someone gets so consumed by another’s feelings that they neglect their own feelings and needs. Stern says those who regularly prioritize others’ emotions over their own are more susceptible to experiencing anxiety or low-level depression. [emphasis added]

Another researcher quoted in the article, Jamil Zaki, offers, “Being supportive of those we care about is among our most cherished and important roles, but it’s also one that’s fraught: We want to be there for someone but not lose ourselves.” [emphasis added]

If this sounds like a [partial] plug for rational selfishness, you’d be right in my view. I think what these people have in mind is rational selfishness, although not necessarily consciously. Also not mentioned is the term altruism. But that’s what Wallace has in mind—again, probably not consciously—when she talks about when “someone gets so consumed by another’s feelings that they neglect their own feelings and needs.” Self-neglect is exactly what altruism demands. And rational selfishness is what Zaki has in mind when he urges us “not to lose ourselves.”

Of course, altruism saps one’s self-esteem, as well. In fact, lack of self-esteem is probably a deeper, “root” cause of the anxiety and depression.

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