Sauce for the Gander

It appears that fetus fetishists are getting a dose of sauce for the gander.

A U.S. company that provides software solutions to nonprofit organizations has refused service to the Canadian pro-life group Campaign Life Coalition, accusing it of supporting “hate, prejudice and bigotry."

Campaign Lie hired a consultant to find a 'databank solutions company', who recommended The Databank in Minneapolis.

But [CLC's] Fonseca says that after filling out a form on the company’s website to view a free online demo on behalf of CLC, the consultant received an email reply from Bridget Kelly, The Databank’s sales manager. It stated, “Please continue your search for nonprofit software. Our company values are not a good fit for your organization's mission. There is no need to view our online demonstration today. Thank you.”

At that point the consultant wrote a strongly worded e-mail to the company, calling its decision "outrageous. The company’s CEO, Chris Hanson, wrote back, and far from apologizing, dug in his heels. “Campaign Life Coalition positions on just about every issue are in direct contradiction with not only our personal beliefs and company mission, but also many organizations we currently work with,” he said.

“Sorry if you feel offended by Bridget’s response but I’m offended by organizations that seek to violate and restrict the human rights of women, gays, lesbians and others. The only amicable resolution for hate, prejudice and bigotry is to eliminate it.”

Oh yeah, the people so quick to call for boycotts of products and companies they deem sinful don't like it a bit when someone has principles of their own -- like standing up for human rights.

I don't have a need for 'database solutions' but I know where I'd go if I did.


h/t @notmuchelse

Is the wearing of a "Hallowe'en costume" ...

a right? Or a tradition?

Or is it the strictly prescribed expression of an unbound human need to disguise oneself, to play, to have fun and to "step out" of character?

Every year there are schools that draw a boundary line with regard to the manner of costumes that can be worn - or indeed, if at all - in a classroom.

Disclosure: I have a long history of making costumes for myself, for family members and for friends.  These déguisements have been worn not only at Hallowe'en but on many other occasions.  A friend and I may were among the first people in Ottawa to dress up at a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Towne Cinema, back in the 70s. I lent him a lacy bra for his take on Dr Frank'n'Furter.



Last year I viewed an exhibition of ofrendas created by artists of Latina ancestry for Día de los Muertos - the day of the Dead - in Arizona.  That tradition is extremely moving, and as someone who grew up in a francophone, catholic environment, the politically engaged and charged art created by the Mexican-American activists resonated with my own perspectives.

Wearing costumes can be joyous, creative and affirming.  The ambivalence I feel about putting limitations on such opportunities concerns the ugliness displayed by most costumes, as they demonstrate bigotry, ethnic and cultural stereotypes and as well, the mercenary appropriation of the human need to express and experience oneself in a different way.

A is for Anti-semitism and Apartheid (with update)

My father and mother shared the history of growing up in Ottawa's multicultural Lower Town with their daughters. It was thus I learned of the bigotry that francophone Catholic priests spread from the height of their pulpit, preaching - and deliberately planting seeds of violence - against the Irish, the Protestants and particularly, their Jewish neighbours. Later on, I discovered research documenting the hateful manifestions of anti-semitism.

My parents' choices as well as their open minds allowed me to understand the life experiences of immigrants to Canada as well as the vital and dynamic role the Jewish community held in Ottawa since its foundation. As an adolescent, I had the privilege of attending a religious service in the old synagogue, now closed.

When my cousin who converted to Reformed Judaism in her 30s invited me to her daughter's Bat Mitzvah, I felt honoured then moved by the beauty and spiritual force of the ritual. The women and men of this congregation are equally and fully engaged in all practices of their religious traditions.

Recently a friend's mom stated the film "An Education" sugar-coated its anti-semitic depiction of anti-semitism; after watching it I agreed with her impression, though some Jewish reviewers had a different perspective.

Today my friend lagatta directed my attention to powerful opinion piece by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, one of the original founding mothers of Ms magazine. It concludes:

As a life-long, Israel-loving, peace-seeking Zionist, I disdained the hyperbolic label and the facile, incendiary parallels to pre-Mandela South Africa that, for years, have been propagated by Jimmy Carter and some pundits on the left. I’ve made at least two dozen trips to Israel since 1976 and, though strongly critical of its government’s policies toward Palestinians within and outside the Green Line — whether under Labor, Likud or Kadima leadership — I never felt that extreme indictment was warranted by the facts on the ground. Then again, until last month, I had never been to Hebron.

Justice-loving Jews cannot keep denying what is happening under Israeli auspices in Hebron; we can never say we didn’t know.

It is painful to discover that a person, an institution or a belief one respects is wrong. It takes courage to say so.

Via our feminista consoeur AntoniaZ, a link to a strong and timely opinion piece in Haaretz.

Adoption/Bigotry Conundrum

The Christian Taliban says: Abortion is murder.

It also says: Homosexuals are evil.

So, what happens when a Talibanny confronts a woman with an unplanned pregnancy who has been successfully brainwashed?

SHE calls it 'the adoption conundrum'. Sure is.

Very occasionally, women who are in crisis pregnancy, will discuss and consider adoption. In my experience it is sometimes more common for younger women, especially ‘under age’ teenage girls to think about adoption. In a previous job, when I was helping pregnant girls aged 13 – 17, they would often enquire about adoption, but just as quickly say that they didn’t want their baby to go to homosexual couples. Here in London, when a pregnant lady broaches the possibility of adoption, she is more hesitant, but nonetheless will have the gut reaction that she does not want her baby to go to a homosexual couple. But outside of our centre, who is listening to these women?

This blogger (warning: religious glurge at link) doesn't say whether these women would rather abort than be a party to an evil gay adoption. But it's possible, no?

Rather, she -- I assume it's a she -- whinges about the rights of birth mothers to be bigoted.

In the debate on who should be entitled to adopt children – gay/lesbian couples or a heterosexual family – why aren’t the voices of women who do not want their children to go to homosexual ‘unions’ ever heard? This includes a woman in crisis pregnancy or a woman who for whatever reasons has her child taken from her by government bodies. Might this be a plausible reason why the biological mothers are kept gagged – because if it were more widely known that they did not want their children going to homosexual ‘unions’ that the pro-homosexual adoption lobby would lose their trump card? After all, the lobby groups that support gay adoption talk about it being a ‘right’ to adopt a child, but what right is left to the biological mother? Does she not have the right firstly to freedom of speech where she can say that she does not want her child to go to a homosexual couple? And secondly, does she not have the right to decide that her child who is her flesh and blood ought not to go to a homosexual couple? This talk and bluster about so-called ‘rights’ is very selective –so much so that the rights of ‘the mother of origin’ aka the biological mother are often forgotten altogether.

(Love all those scare quotes.)

Right. And how about birth mothers who don't want their children to go to couples of different ethnic origins? Different religions?

Don't they have rights too, dammit?

I have a (white) cousin who was dating a black guy. Her asshole fundy father actually threatened to kill her if she didn't stop seeing him. She left the province and didn't look back. (Apparently, daddy dearest was heart-broken. I say 'apparently' because I never had anything to do with the jerk again.)

So, if a fundy father would kill a grown-up daughter out of bigotry, it seems to me that some of that fine twisty-pretzelly logic the fetus fetishists love could be worked up and around to justify the abortion of a fetus otherwise destined for a gay couple. After all, don't they believe that the only moral abortion is their own particular, very special-circumstances-driven abortion?

h/t http://www.bigbluewave.ca/2010/11/adoption-conundrum.html