Oh, that wasn’t my intention at all. My apologies.
I just meant to point out that the mindset that falls back on the Bible to explain terrorizing their children is cherry picked, at best and the Bible itself is packed with conflicting mandates because it wasn’t assembled by god, but by men, every one of whom had an agenda that was less than noble.
Yeah, it’s pretty hard to reconcile what some of the writers said with modern evangelicalism. But religion has always been a fig leaf (ha!) for bigotry and the nature of most religious manuscripts being assemblages of oral histories, wacky prophecies often written by truly oppressed people wishing for release and plain old hero worship lends itself to wide swings in interpretation and the ability to grab any old line to fit any old purpose.
Thanks for the Bible study group. I was so steeped in this from such an early age I often fantasize about becoming an anti-preacher and going all “Jesus in the temple” on evangelicals. I think I paid better attention and retained more than most of the sheep (hey, it’s supposed to be a compliment to Christians!). It’s fun to exercise that muscle, though.
Weaker, yes, but the real issue is that children are susceptible to things like… kindness, sharing, learning to appreciate others, learning to appreciate a world without guns or Reagonomics or Christofascism. There’s a reason that Fox News hates Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street, and other shows that make kids into better people and better citizens.
This hits home particularly hard, as this young artist’s visual style is very similar to my daughter’s. And my daughter would incorporate some of the same themes.
Even in our more “progressive” neighborhood, there would be people who would pull this shit. I think, but can’t be certain, that the school would back the artist 100% here. But the hateful bullshit would probably still have happened at the school board meeting.
It’s everywhere at this point - especially since right wing “activists” are crossing into other places to play the “aggrieved parents” in communities where they don’t live.
It was 1999 and I was driving a UHaul with many of my worldly possessions through the Florida Panhandle and the only radio in the vehicle was AM. And the only station I could find worth listening to was a right-wing Christian station.
I listened in awe and wonder as a group of self-professed Christians told me over the radio how Star Wars was Satanic, because it had intelligent aliens who talked in it.
The reasoning went like this: There are human beings and there are animals. If you’re not a human being, you’re an animal. An alien, then, is an animal. But an alien is an animal that talks, and, as we all know, the only talking animals are demonic. Thus the aliens in Star Wars are demons and the whole of Star Wars is Satanic.
23 years since I heard that and I’m still both stunned and having a belly laugh at the same time.
My hope is that her new version of the mural is dystopian, whether that is painting over every kid’s clothes with a gray prison-like uniform, and making them blank-faced instead of smiling, or replacing all the kids with guns, and “Stay Healthy” with “GUNS!!!”
“I am a conservative, right-wing, gun-loving American,” Hargreaves declared at the meeting. “And I’ve never seen more bigoted people in my life.”
Apparently she’s never met any of her fellow conservative American colleagues lol.
This his been their modus operandi for years and years. I wonder what part of the Conservative agenda she agrees with, if it isn’t attacking children for liking cartoon gays?
What the actual fuck. I hope that person some day feels ashamed of their role in this. This is a teenager they are talking about, FFS.
It’s a lovely mural, both aesthetically and thematically. It has a wonderful and positive message of inclusiveness and healing. I’d love to have something like this at my middle school which had all the minimalism and charm of a Soviet-era East German apartment block.
Kids have enough bullshit in their lives without needing so-called adults constantly shitting all over them only to further some other agenda.
It seems like it used to be that progressives and conservatives desired wanted “progress” in the broader sense of the word. The debate was largely over the speed of progress, how to accomplish it, and how to pay for it. Now you only have those who are progressive and those who are regressive.
It’s right there in her speech. There are tons of single issue 2A voters out there.
A bit of a non-sequitur, but in my opinion if the Dems want to actually pass some meaningful gun control they should be be pushing for more strict/universal background checks which is supported by basically everyone instead of things like mag size and grip type which will basically never pass on a federal level.
Great theory, but unfortunately on the ground, it doesn’t matter what the actual policy proposal is. The extreme gun nuts get all frothy about it and even the more reasonable 2A enthusiasts just go along.
We have exactly the kind of reasonable restrictions on the ballot this year and you should see the signs! Rigorous background checks and closing the gun show loophole = burning and eating babies. More moderate 2A-ers recognize the hyperbole but vote against it “just in case” the gibbering idiots are partly right.
Yeah, they’ve definitely been in lock step with a “no” to anything related to gun control, but afaik a lot of the bills on the ballot this year include magazine size which I consider a bit of a poison pill for something that’s generally supported like background checks.
