Of Sex Ed and Dickheads... (updated)

On Monday the Ontario government released its comprehensive Health and Physical Education curriculum for grades 1 through 12, which includes a component on human sexuality.

Some people got sidetracked. This woman opined that her own children are too clever or savvy for the topics addressed. Though Soupcoff is a parent and a non-practicing lawyer, she lacks pedagogical training as well as an understanding of cognitive development-appropriate teaching methods. She also forgets there ARE adults who flail, fail and suffer from a dearth of basic life skills and knowledge.

Nadine Thornhill read it ALL. And she shared her observations, too.

Our friend Rick at Queer Thoughts also blogged about the new curriculum.

Premier Wynne was subjected to implicit homophobic baiting in the legislature; this is how she responded:

Bravo Kathleen, you go grrrl! we say.

On Tuesday a protest against the curriculum was held at Queen's Park, attended by upset parents, religious extremists and an assortment of right-wing nut-job misogynists, homophobes and bigots. 1800 people were expected.  Less than 200 showed up, though the exact number was disputed.  My co-blogger wondered if hundreds of school kids would get bused in, as the Catholics do for the annual March for Lies. They were not.

Speakers demanded that media not portray them as fringe religious zealots, and blamed the media for putting pressure on the government to update the curriculum (last version was 1998, way before mobile devices were available to children).  

Sadly, this is how some protesters expressed their concerns:

and:

Oh, remember (ex)Trustee Sam?  His pathetic, delusional rantings have become testerical.

He appears oblivious to documented facts about pedophilia; namely that 68% of cases of child sexual abuse are perpetrated by family members.  The curriculum will provide kids with information about being respected and heard - a big part of consent - and what to do if adults transgress their personal boundaries.  Now why would that make Sam anxious?

Here is Nadine Thornhill again, this time providing parents with ways for broaching the issue of consent with their children. Her website is an amazing resource for parents who want to address the topics covered by the Ontario curriculum with their children, in advance of its September 2015 implementation.


And not unconnected to our provincial brouhaha, this happened in the Excited States:

Whoa! Does someone lacks basic knowledge of human physiology?  Did Republican politician Vito Barbieri attend creationist abstinence anti-sex ed summer camp? Which led someone to wonder:

As it turns out, Barbieri was only using tactical trickery, adding to the treasure trove of dumb metaphors and analogies (whoops! I said anal) that anti-abortion crusaders deploy: parrots in cages, kidneys, balloons and many many others, as catalogued here by fern hill.

"I was being rhetorical, because I was trying to make the point that equalizing a colonoscopy to this particular procedure was apples and oranges," he said. "So I was asking a rhetorical question that was designed to make her say that they weren't the same thing, and she did so. It was the response I wanted."

oookay.

THIS by the way, is a very, very good analogy.  These two sketch the epidemiological effect of anti-sex Ed parents and their children on other families. This one is another take on the harmful consequences of anti-sex Ed, like anti-vaccination believers. 


The last word on Sex Ed (Ed suggestive of Edwardian) belongs to Sir Francis:

UPDATE: Harper Cons are pushing all the hot-button issues for their fundraising and 2015 elections campaigning efforts. A CPC MP has added her bigoted 2¢ from the same anti-sex-education choir songs that *trustee* Sam and provincial RWNJ Cons are shrieeeking. Cheryl Gallant parroted its bizarre obfuscations in the House of Commons. 

This is how the Reformatories show their contempt for Parliament: by using it as their sewage dump for the lies and delusional speaking points cranked out by the Politburo/PMO. 

Gallant is no newcomer to anti-choice controversy; 11 years ago at the annual March for Lies she said this.  Dean Del Mastro has also jumped on the anti-sex-ed bandwagon but news coverage for his grandiose gesture - signing Levant's petition - is curiously devoid of content, unlike the volumes posted about his criminal trial.

The last word of this update belongs to Ariel Troster and her inspired take on *concerned parents* privilege:

"[..]whether I like it or not, being a parent lends me some sort of credibility and authority to speak on issues that are relevant to children. And it gives me an opportunity to disrupt the bigots who use ridiculous “think of the children” logic to deny people’s human rights and promote discrimination.

The notion that children need to be protected from queer and trans people is an old trope. In the 1970s, Anita Bryant based an entire “Save Our Children” campaign on the idea that gay people could be hiding in schools and corrupting innocent kids. She played on the false association between homosexuality and pedophilia and built a national campaign against gay rights in the U.S. based on it. While this seems like a total anachronism to many of us today, this same vein of manipulation is still alive and well."

Help for those suffering from erectile dysfunctions.

Looks like Pastor Jones got hisself a wanking buddy.

"Book burning is a cowardly act by those afraid that their beliefs aren't strong enough to attract people if if they are allowed a choice," said Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life. The National Association of Evangelicals, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and Southern Baptist leaders all issued similar statements leading up to Saturday's anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in American history.

The Rev. Bob Old of Springfield, Tenn., doesn't care what they think. The longtime Baptist minister says the Rev. Terry Jones of the Dove World Center Outreach in Gainesville, Fla., is doing the right thing by burning the Quran. So he's going to do likewise.

Why pay for Viagra when you can join Jones and Old to get your hate hard-on for free?

More: Margaret and Helen weigh in - "... a bunch of jack-asses are going to tell us that God hates us too and we shouldn’t generalize all Republicans like that. Well all I have to say is if it quacks like a Duck and sets a Quran on fire then it must be a Republican."

merci, boom boom.

"Islam is not a religion."

Well it would take one to know one, it seems.

From Think Progress, we learn that Pat Robertson has wasted no time in furthering his christofascist agenda.

On his 700 Club TV show yesterday, Pat Robertson claimed that Islam is “not a religion,” but “a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination” ... Anti-Islam rhetoric is nothing new for Robertson. He has previously called it “a violent religion” and “a political system…bent on world domination.”

It's interesting how his condemnation of the fundamentalist islamic movement corresponds exactly to the extreme and radical political tactics that his church advocates.

And they talk about infidels and all this, but the truth is that’s what the game is. So you are dealing with not a religion. You’re dealing with a political system.

Robertson's acolytes and zealots are no different from the islamists that he decries, except for the god they claim, in order to run roughshod over non-believers.

Fetishism or Idolatry?

A recent post over at Blob Blogging Wingnut's House of Constant Shrieeekkking, Persecution and Fetus Fetishism supplied a closer look at abortion-criminalizers’ yammering and never-ending public obsession with The Fetus©™.

SHE was waxing poetic about the potential that this invention offered. You can go find HER post if you wish; I'm not linking to it.

Pregnant women are being given the chance to hold life-size models of their unborn babies, thanks to an invention that converts data from ultrasound and MRI scans.

The comments that follow the news item range predictably enough, from zygote zealotry to the cynical contemplation of a niche market for yet another tchotchka associated to the breeding function.

This one got it:

Women already hold their unborn babies. How can you "hold" a child more intensely than you do in your womb? Why is it that we need to see a fetus to get a sense of it when it's inside us? - from Susanna, Berlin.

Abortion criminalizers believe in the higher power of The Fetus©™, separate from a pregnant woman. This seems to be the pseudo-reality that fetus fetishists willfully choose to recognize. It suits their goal of ensuring legal control over The Fetus©™, often to the pregnant women's detriment.

And what's with the fetus fetishism? In anthropological terms, a fetish is a "man-made" object used in religious cults. Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent value or powers to an object. That jibes with the zygote zealots view of the object of their obsession. Not of woman born. Unborn. Pre-born. Innocent because not yet contaminated by female naughty bits.

Why fetishism and not idolatry, then? The key difference is the degree of obsession. While zygote zealotry appears to be an all-encompassing financial, intellectual, emotional and religious concern for most abortion-criminalizers, it's a stretch to suggest that they worship the fetus. Intense spiritual focus is required along with attendant rituals, for fetishism to get kicked up to the level of idolatry.

While those repetitive images of The Fetus©™, juxtaposed with emotionally charged exhortations that are paraded outside Planned Parenthood clinics in the US could be construed as the manifestation of a primitive and savage religious cult, they are inspired by the ideological doctrine of fundamentalist monotheistic religions. This zygote/embryo/fetus obsession is not technically idolatrous.

Will anti-abortion priests officially bless the embryo effigies that devout fundamentalist Catholic couples bring to church? Some sort of ceremony that falls short of being a sacrament will be instituted no doubt.

Fern hill wrote about US FDA cautions regarding the effect ultrasonography could have on fetal brain development. Though seemingly endorsed by an obstetrician, Dr Lopes -the inventor - is neither a physician nor a medical doctor. He does seem eager to test the money-making potential of his invention in a Brazilian clinic.

How long would a fetus have to be exposed to this medically unnecessary procedure to create a 3-D model - long enough to cause irrevocable damage to its developing neurons? Sadly, fetishists like Blob Blogging Wingnut only care about how the object of their obsession - The Fetus©™ - can be used to further their political agenda.

DAMMIT JANET! is a low-tech image kinda of place. We like the knitted uterus pictured above. It's not a fetish, it's a yarnwomb.

US rightwingnutters in throes of Supreme panic?

"A lot of district attorneys thought they were doing God's work. But she saw it as a civic responsibility."

That's an observation shared by a former colleague of Sonia Sotomayor. And it goes a long way towards explaining why many Republicans and right-wing fundamentalist religious zygote zealots are opposed to her nomination to the Supreme Court of the US.

... Because it is difficult to dismiss her academic credentials and her professional experience, some on the right have resorted to the politics of personal destruction. Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice said in a radio interview that Judge Sotomayor was picked because "she's a woman and Hispanic, not because she was the best qualified." Former congressman Tom Tancredo sank to even greater depths when he called Judge Sotomayor a "racist" for her past affiliation with the Hispanic advocacy group, the National Council of La Raza; Mr. Tancredo called La Raza "a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses." Former Bush adviser Karl Rove implicitly questioned Judge Sotomayor's intelligence, saying in an interview with PBS host Charlie Rose that "I know lots of stupid people who went to Ivy League schools."

There's more:

... a coalition of conservative group leaders and opinion leaders has signed a letter calling on Senate Republicans to filibuster President Obama’s Supreme Court choice, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. ... The conservatives say their intent is not to kill the nomination, as Democrats used the tactic, but rather to provide for lengthier debate on its merits. The signatories include a broad swath of the conservative movement, including evangelicals, gun-rights advocates, anti-tax leaders, anti-abortion groups, libertarians and local Republican leaders.

Oh, and the most damning "evidence" that's been dragged up from Sotomayor's past pronouncements gets royally raked over.

“Here you have a racist,” said radio’s Rush Limbaugh of Sotomayor, nominated by President Obama, “the greatest living example of a reverse racist.”“We’re gonna start with the racist quotes from our new Supreme Court nominee,” said Fox News’ Glenn Beck. “I don’t like the charges, well you’re a racist, they’re a racist. But when I hear this, gee, she sure sounds like a racist,” he said of Sotomayor’s statement in a speech that, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Yet, according to a recent Gallup poll, 54% of the US population would like to see Sotomayor confirmed to SCOTUS. That majority must be, as JABbering Stooge summarized in his tidy wrap-up of Jill Stanek's screed about third trimester abortion: 'evil Satanic, Baby-Jesus-and-America-haters'.

Pity the poor abortion criminalizers.

Pity the poor abortion criminalizers for they cannot rejoice out loud.

Shed a tear for their plight; Bill Donohue and Jill Stanek stewing in their venom, silenced because their noisy jubilation could attract unwanted FBI attention.

Consider their dilemma: for years they've directed murderous hatred towards health care practitioners who provide abortion and now they're not able to claim the glory.

So sad for the members of the Vulture Culture who want to embrace the man who shot Dr George Tiller dead in the lobby of his church.

Life is unfair, they cannot trumpet that this is a MASSIVE victory for their side, lest they be charged as co-conspirators in this public assassination.

Edited to add: And now Operation Rescue is obliged to lie ... to LIE!!! to cover up any perceived complicity in this deliberate act of terrorism.

Scientific information VS religious zealotry propaganda.

Last week we wrote about Apple's ill-advised facilitation of an iPod download.

Since then, pediatricians have announced that the term for injuries caused by parents' or infant care-givers' actions has been changed from 'Shaken Baby Syndrome' to the more scientifically appropriate 'Abusive Head Trauma'. In Canada, the Canadian Medical Association Journal recently reported that a study provided evidence that appropriately targeted campaigns to increase awareness about the harm that can be caused to infants and babies are effective. In fact, it recommended that the information presented by a limited number of instructors could be reinforced by

"... multiple exposures through prenatal, maternity and postnatal health care providers, media and community support organizations," write Dr. Ronald Barr and coauthors. Dr. Barr is head of community child health at the Child & Family Research Institute and professor of pediatrics in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia.

"These findings complement the small number of reports that have reported that practical and contextually relevant materials presented to parents before or shortly after birth can change knowledge and behaviours and perhaps reduce the incidence of shaken baby syndrome ..."

One has to wonder about individuals who respond to the CBC news item with comments like these:

Here We are talking about Shaken baby syndrome and change to Abusive head injury. But we don't have to forget that Shaken baby syndromes are based on Unproven, Junk science. There is no proff that shaking cause the head injury and here Canada 143 cases put on inquiry. my conclusion of this all event is to save thier job as child advocate pediatician because they thought that we cann't servive under Shaken baby syndrome termilogy. Moreover they get open field to do whatever they want to do with any kid addmite in Hospital as head injury and Pediatrician can hide all mistake they made at hospital by sutting down mouth of parents and caregiver by alligating kid have Abusive head trama. ...

Here we are talking about life science not build a CN tower. Do you have any medical literature that you prove a SBS in Lab? Any buddy see the Baby was Shaken? Is it Bacterial Or a Viral dieases that you can grow on aggar media? Is it a Litmuspaper test that you can see colour change looking at light? Is it a Giemsa stain test that you can see under microcsope? If Yes, late me know which medical literature have all these tests ruslts. If NO then who write all literatue? Those want prove theire finding at legal battle. Is not POV, IS TRUTH

Don't those pronouncements have the familiar ring of zygote zealots who cherry-pick scientific information that purportedly supports their abortion-criminalizing, contraceptive-demonizing screeds and yet who deride any challenge, even medical, to their Gawd-given control over women and children's well-being and safety?

Edited to update a link that was no longer available.

Removing women from the picture, deliberately.

Two fundamentalist Orthodox Jewish newspapers in Israel altered an official photograph of the new cabinet picture to remove the two female cabinet ministers.

Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver were grouped with the rest of the 30-member cabinet for their inaugural photo.

But Yated Neeman newspaper digitally changed the picture by replacing them with two men. The Shaa Tova newspaper blacked the women out.

Publishing pictures of women is viewed by many ultra-orthodox Jews as a violation of female modesty.

I heard about this on Radio-Canada this morning. Are fundamentalist zealots in the planet's three major religions conspiring and competing to see who can put on the most MASSIVE display of misogyny? The actions taken, which range from allowing men to rape their wives with impunity in Afghanistan to the Pope's deliberate obfuscation of scientific research, are a clear violation of women's basic human rights. Using photoshop to remove women from view seems benign, in comparison but such incidents demonstrate that religious clerics persist in using doctrine and ideology to punish women who dare to act like human beings.

Venomous Vultures

That is the only appropriate qualifier for the author of this shriEEEkkk!!! rant passing itself off as a reasonable opinion piece.

You remember the Vulture Culture, don't you? It's a loose alliance of fetus fetishists, religious fundamentalists, neocon rightwing authoritarians and women-haters that have come together in one MASSIVE shriek-fest for the purpose of re-criminalizing abortion. Some of them engineered last year's fiasco, The Pill Kills! campaign.

As for the drivel posted at KX.net, the standard disclaimer distances the site owner from the poison oozing from the rant:

This article is a blog post and does not represent the views or opinions of Reiten Television, KXNet.com, its staff and associates ....

But of course. Consider this gem:

What’s also stupid is this notion that abortions are somehow saving these children from lives of hardship when, in reality, most abortions are basically just birth control exercised by women too lazy or careless to either live their sexual lives responsible or face up to the consequences of their irresponsible actions. The pro-abortion crowd loves to emotionalize this issue with stories about women who allegedly would have died in pregnancy were it not for abortion, or babies who would be born with awful birth defects, but the truth is that the occurrence of these cases in overall abortion cases is so low as to be inconsequential.

Aside from the self-righteous preachiness and contempt for women, this statement trivializes women who have died in pregnancy. Women who chose pregnancy and who were confronted with state legislators, health care providers and hospital administrators who supported extraordinary medical interventions to "save" the embryos or fetus they carried - by depriving them of their own right to life.

Vulture culture zealots - because dead flesh excites them and turns their crank.

Update on the carrion gang - I wrote this before I read JJ and her blogpost at unrepentantoldhippie's about the fetus fetishists' internet pile-on when news regarding the Montana plane crash disclosed that nine members of the same family, seven of them children under the age of nine, were related to Irving Feltkamp, who owns a chain of clinics that offer abortion services.

So, about those vultures who feast on carnage? Look no further than Jill Stanek, exploiting this family tragedy with bloody beak and sharpened claws and shrieeeking about the righteousness of her fundamentalist God's vicious and unholy revenge.

Religious zealotry as a mental disorder ... why the hell not?

Via Slap Upside The Head, we learn that Kari Simpson has filed a complaint with the BC Human Rights Tribunal, alleging that the Ministry of Education (and other parties named) discriminates against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students by depriving them of the support and services that would "cure them of their dysfunctionality".

Not shy about using the legal and court system to draw public attention to her cause, Simpson claims:

"... sexual re-orientation therapies have helped thousands of individuals to recover from such dysfunctional orientations. School counsellors are being denied the tools to be effective advocates for students in need of sexual re-orientation help and they should have access to resources and training that will equip them to properly counsel students."

Should the only reasonable, legal, systemic counterweight to such pernicious and unmitigated bigotry be an initiative to have the following definition included in the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), as a sub-category of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

Zealot fundamentalist fixation is a mental illness most commonly characterized by intrusive, repetitive thoughts resulting in compulsive behaviors and mental acts that the person feels driven to perform, according to religious dogma and beliefs that must be applied rigidly, aimed at reducing anxiety by preventing some dreaded event or by denying other people's reality. In extreme manifestations of this illness, those who suffer from ZFF may utter verbal abuse and are capable of acts of physical violence toward individuals and organizations that embody the dreaded event that is feared and must be destroyed at all costs. See fetus fetishists.

Of course, that could mean acting against the fundamentalist religious zealots with the same authoritarian force that they resolutely and implacably try to use against us.

Men In Fur, Again.

In the comments to fern hill's blogpost, "Anonymous" suggests that criticizing and ridiculizing the Vatican is the same as spreading hatred against blacks, Hispanics or Jews.

"Anonymous" conveniently overlooks the historical facts about the men in fur. The Vatican's clerics choose to elevate themselves above the rest of humanity, with their ritual, their pomp, and their arcane rationalizations for establishing themselves as religious royalty. They are the ones who exclude, judge, condemn others from their gilded palaces.

It is revealing that their ecclesiastical rule is rooted in principles that, century after century, conveniently dismiss the real harm and destruction that pedophile priests have caused to girls and boys.

Hold on to your delusions, "Anonymous". But if you - or the Vatican - can't stand a little heat now, just imagine what it'll be like when you arrive in the hell of your own vision and making.

Shrieeekkk! Breeding lesbians are to blame!

From this moment on, I must stop imagining who else the scathingly idiotic "Religious (don't call us that) Right" are going to blame. A thought crossed my mind the other day, wondering how the fetus fetishists were going to spin their way out of the support they initially provided to Octuplets' Mom Nadya Suleman.

Bruce of Canuck Attitude kindly provided the answer:

As you all know from our secret meetings where we plan out our world domination, the gays are responsible for all the world's ills– or at least that's what Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council believes. Our latest victory, according to the virulently homophobic jerk is to force America's women to turn out litters of children. Nadya Suleman's eight children are not the result of a sloppy fertility treatment, but rather, the result of procreating lesbians.

Shrieeekkk! The Family Research Council's Tony Perkins is quite the little drama queen.

Pregnancy can be fatal

Medical research has in recent years, developed more studies about the effects of pregnancy on the growth of malignant tumours. There are concerns that the hormone enriched physiological environment produced during pregnancy - which stimulates the growth of blastocytes (zygote cells) - can also encourage the proliferation of cancerous cells already present in a woman's body.

Medical case histories document 'aggressive' forms of cancer diagnosed during a woman's pregnancy. The dilemma that some pregnant women face is the following: radiation therapy, chemotherapy and in some cases, surgery may compromise the pregnancy. For some women who are pregnant because of a heartfelt decision and commitment, a diagnosis of breast cancer for example, presents them with a heart-wrenching choice.

Some survive their pregnancy, give birth and successfully battle against cancer. Some are not as lucky. After my sister died of ovarian cancer, I read Ruth Picardie - Before I Say Goodbye.

Today I read about 41 year-old Jayne Soliman who died as a result of an undiagnosed brain tumour that grew - aggressively - during her pregnancy and triggered a fatal hemorrhage. Though Soliman was clinically dead, a machine kept her heart beating and her blood pumping so that her fetus could be the beneficiary of steroids that were injected into her body. This procedure was done to artificially stimulate fetal lung development in the 48 hours before a Caesarian was practiced to remove the fragile and premature Aya Jayne from the dead woman's uterus.

One can only imagine the dilemma facing the rabid fundamentalist christian fetus fetishists and bigots, unsure whether to claim this tragedy as a triumph for their ideological zealotry, or to shrieeekkk! because Aya Jayne's father is Mahmoud Soliman. Also,

... More than 300 mourners attended Ms Soliman's funeral last weekend, which was held at the Jamia mosque ....

Yes, that should elicit some shrieeekkks and grunts from the neanderthals over at small dead brains.

The ugly face of religious and political zealotry

Any moment now, Blob Blogging Wingnut will be making an announcement that feminism and feminists are responsible to blame for this atrocity in Afghanistan.

Because if there is one thing that brings rabid fundamentalist catholic and islamist fanatics together with genocidal religious patriots, it's the way these authoritarian zealots try to evade responsibility for their words and actions by attacking those who challenge the premise of their authority.

Give or take another half-dozen.

The Duggar family was in the news again recently for .... c'mon, just take a wild guess.

Yep. Ma Duggar baked another bun and popped it out of her oven. Number 18.

The Duggar family is not new to the news. In fact, one suspects that Pa 'n Ma came to the realization a few years and babies ago that they could expand this novelty act into the big times. They have their own reality show on a cable network.

The Duggars' unbridled breeding bonanza is not viewed as the Gawdgiven miracle that Jim Bob invariably spins during his numerous TV appearances. Here's one trenchant rant.

Michelle Duggar has every right to do what she wants with her body—Roe V. Wade goes both ways—but I also have the right to think it’s gross. As a friend of mine just said, “It’s a vagina, not a clown car!” It’s also selfish. By all means, if you can afford to have 18 children and provide a good life for them, blah, blah, blah, God’s will, GREAT—but couldn’t a fraction of those 18 be the children in orphanages also brought into this world thanks to God’s will?

Let’s face it. Michelle Duggar isn’t gonna put a cork in it. They’re going to have a 19th and 20th child probably by the time Obama finishes his first term. But the media needs to stop giving these people such positive attention. Watching Jim and Michelle Duggar hawk their TV show and book on “The Today Show” this morning was disturbing because it’s evidence of a vicious cycle—they need to pimp themselves out in order to afford 18 kids, but they would have nothing to pimp if Michelle started taking birth control and gave God the finger. Meanwhile, who’s thinking about all the kids out there who need homes, with these rabid procreators stealing the spotlight?

eh. Rabid procreators. Good point though. Why not adopt all those abandoned babies. Or would schlock TV not pay as well or perhaps, not bother to provide coverage for this choice? I suspect that the media attention is based on fascination with the marathonian capacity of Michelle Duggar's reproductive system. Jim Bob would likely auction his wife's uterus to one of those travelling exhibitions about the human body except for the fact that there's still more money to be made from plowing that field.

Islamist Fathers4Justice

Thanks to The Mound of Sound, we learn about:

An eight-year old Saudi Arabian girl who was married off by her father to a 58-year-old man [...] in August after the marriage contract was signed by her father and the groom. ... The case appears to fit a pattern of divorced fathers using their children to take revenge against their ex-wives. Mothers usually only have custody while the children are young.

The disgruntled members of fathers4justice must be gnashing their teeth in envy.

The ignorant, the zealots and the haters will reveal themselves.

Earlier this evening, a Radio-Canada journalist was trying to interview Dimitri Soulas, the PM's media spokesman. Michel Picard, I think it was, became increasingly frustrated with Soulas' evasiveness and his overbearing rote declarations that ran roughshod over the reporter's attempts to get him to actually answer the questions asked.

The speaking points issued by Harper play over and over again in a never-ending audio loop, emerging from those who still march to his beat.

On discussion boards and blogs, such as those associated to Stephen Taylor's Blogging Tories, Harper supporters - the knuckle draggers, the religious ideologues and the lunatics have been free-styling and embellishing the party line.

Over the last four days, they have been savaging members of Parliament and the political parties who were elected by Canadians to serve them and govern their country.

Next they will direct their ignorance, their zealotry and their hate towards Governor General Michaëlle Jean. She is a woman, she is of Haïtian ancestry and she is progressive. She is also the most powerful person in Canada at the moment, invested with the legal and political potential to determine who will be governing our country in the year to come.

Pay attention to what they'll write about her, the lies they'll concoct, the venom they'll spew, the rage they'll direct towards this intelligent, powerful woman who represents the sum of all their irrational and toxic fears.

Girls and Women, Girls and Women, Girls and Women

We at Birth Pangs are heartily sick of this bullshit meme.

From the recent throne speech:

Our mission in Afghanistan is a noble and necessary endeavour.

It is making a difference in the lives of men who were victims of Taliban oppression, for children forced to live in ignorance, and for women who had no human rights.

From Peter MacKay:

We are supporting women who, under the Taliban regime, were forbidden to go to school, to work or to vote. . . . We are building a future for children, so that they can all be educated, have access to medical care, and have the freedom to grow up in a climate of security and hope rather than in fear.

And from Bev Oda:

"After years of conflict and insecurity, Afghanistan’s education system is one of the weakest in the world. This has deeply affected the country’s ability to rebuild and sustain itself,” said Minister Oda. “But progress is being made, and Canada continues to reinforce its role as a leader for education in Afghanistan, particularly for women and girls."

Well, thank Gord for the Canadians.

Um, well, maybe not. Today, UNICEF released a report on Afghanistan's children.