All of these things are at risk.
I think she does - the bill is about materials being sent home with kids from schools that include sodomy or grooming or the incredibly vague ‘lgbt agenda’
It’s designed so that instead of banning books individually, they can just sue for anything they don’t like.
The headline makes it sound ridiculous - and in a way it is, of course - but it’s potentially dangerous. I don’t know how much sway her organisation has, if it’s big or niche. Hopefully zero
they don’t believe in western religious tenants like gods and afterlife
Yeah, but their whole point is that this doesn’t undermine their status as a religion. It doesn’t make them ‘a joke or parody religion’, which is the phrase you initially replied to:
This is a common misconception. TST is not a joke or parody religion.
What makes you say that?
They don’t exist as a semi-serious troll organisation to undermine Christianity is my point, they take their beliefs and religious status seriously.
They don’t believe in a supernatural power, but they see themselves as a serious religion with serious beliefs. From your link:
‘[Satanism is] a narrative structure by which we contextualize our lives and works. …[it is] a body of symbolism and religious practice — a sense of identity, culture, community, and shared values.’
They have seven Tenets, none of which are directly about other religions - although one does mention being opposed to ‘distorting scientific facts’. Most are about compassion and individuality.
‘Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought.’
Agree with them or not, but they see themselves as much more than some kind of shell religion to undermine Religious Exemption statutes
If this is truly and legitimately where it ends - doorknocking - then its an annoyance and nothing more
But the real issue is that in the US the evangelical Christian scene has a lot of overlap with various racist/homophobic/right-wing/etcetc scenes
You can ignore ‘have you heard of our saviour Jesus Christ’ visits with a shoulder shrug, but I bet a lot of people have genuine safety concerns about this information being available to this crowd
I think Occupy was really interesting, and part of the reason was the lack of a clear and actionable message
I fully agree that the best and most effective protest movements are those with clear goals and demands, and Occupy wasn’t that
What it managed to do really effectively was bring all kinds of people and ideologies together - there were the active leftists and anarchists, but also liberals and the middle class and all sorts. I’ve read articles and accounts that talk of just every kind of person spending time in that main/original camp, and it spawned a lot of similar events here in the UK
Ultimately it had the same kind of energy as the ‘If you want it, war is over’ billboards of the late 60s. And absolutely thats frustrating from an activist p.o.v
But on the other hand, it did in a lot of ways shift public perspective. I’d stop short of saying it changed the paradigm, but it definitely contributed to an anti-neoliberal, anti-free-market normalization
So yeah, idk. It didn’t really achieve anything; the issues it tried to tackle are still omni-present. But maybe it did do something in some hard to quantify, nebulous ways. Its interesting at least 🤷♀️
But yeah really not a blueprint of an effective protest in a majority of ways
I mean, unless there was a hoax that led to widespread belief that they were gonna launch a bomb
Its suspicious if its out of nowhere, but less so if its in response to an existing rumour
Because its really not about whether or not the historical Jesus was or could have been white - its about the fact that white cultures will almost exclusively portray Jesus as being their own race for reasons that have nothing to do with historical interpretation of demographics is the middle east in ~0ad
People calling out White Jesus arent doing so because of a ‘notion that the middle east was a monolith of appearences’, but instead because of a hypocrisy of many Christian groups - in particular in the evangelical American right - to almost literally whitewash Jesus to look more like themselves, while often dehumanizing the people that look like Jesus ‘probably’ looked like.
Its really not about a historical question of the average middle-eastern skin colour two millenia ago. I assure you that the vast majority of ‘White Jesus’ portrayers have not engaged with that question and do not care about the answer. So to look to that as a refutation of the criticism is really missing the point.
Im not sure what the evidence was, but there was a 3 year investigation, and two other cases were not brought to charge due to lack of evidence. The prosecution case involved the Scientology cover-up, including attempts to get one of the women to sign an NDA
Its probably also worth mentioning that his victims were also Scientologists, and therefore ‘forbidden’ from going to the police.
When they did, they were labelled ‘fair game’ and harrassed by the ‘church’.
So there was also a Civil suit - filed before but put on hold until after the Criminal trial - that has The Church Of Scientology itself as a co-defendent
One of the things Masterson’s lawyers were accused of doing was leaking discovery documents from the Criminal case to Scientology’s attorneys in the Civil case
This just isnt true. I’m not saying this to defend Israel and their actions in Gaza - its just really important to not get swept up in falsehoods, particularly at a time when legitimate criticism of Israel is being portrayed as antisemitic.
There are allegations that Israel administered a birth control drug - which has to be readministered every three months - to Ethiopian immigrants without informed consent. The investigation into this was flawed, but there is literally no evidence to suggest that anyone was forced or coerced into taking this.
What does seem plausible and even likely based on the facts is that doctors often made little or no effort to overcome language and cultural barriers and make sure that consent was fully informed and patients were completely aware of the effects of the procedure.
This is definitely an issue in and of itself, and is a level of societal racism. But what it is not, is ideoligical forcible sterilization.
Further, when you say ‘Ethiopian Jewish women tried to invoke the Law of Return’ the implication is that Israel was really against Ethiopian immigration. In reality, the Israeli government worked with the US to actively enable this - in 1984 Israeli covert forces worked to evacuate the Beta Israel community from Sudan to Israel during the civil war there (this is known as Operation Moses).
Basically, there is so so much to legitimately criticise the Israeli government for right now. Repeating misinformation like this just straight up doesn’t help.
If they’d rather die then they’d better do it, and decrease the surplus population!
Its the only way to make a living thanks to Kalus Schwab and the globalists (/s)