House of Eratosthenes

To avoid further controversy, the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi has rejected a $20,000 gift intended to underwrite an alternate prom replacing one canceled by a local school district after a lesbian student demanded that she be allowed to attend with her girlfriend.

The gift, to sponsor one of several privately sponsored alternate events, came from the American Humanist Association, an advocacy group whose mission is to promote “good without God.”

“Although we support and understand organizations like yours, the majority of Mississippians tremble in terror at the word ‘atheist,’ ” Jennifer Carr, the fund-raiser for the A.C.L.U of Mississippi, wrote in an e-mail message to Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the humanist group.
:
Regarding the A.C.L.U. move, Ms. Carr wrote to Mr. Speckhardt: “Our staff has been talking a lot about your donation offer and have found ourselves in a bit of a conflict. We have fears that your organization sponsoring the prom could stir up even more controversy.”

Duh. Of course it’s supposed to stir up controversy. Everyone involved wants controversy. That’s why the girl wanted to wear a tuxedo.

Trouble with just about everything coming off the rails today — everything non-money-related, anyway — is that the people making the most noise, have it exactly bass-ackward who’s trying to grab headlines and who “just wants to be left alone to live their lives as they see fit.” Just about everywhere you look, someone somewhere is claiming to want to be left alone, to just live out their existence peacefully and quietly…and it’s absolutely bullshit. You can’t swing a dead cat around without slapping someone who’s trying to fundamentally re-order and re-organize the protocols under which the rest of us live. To force perfect strangers he or she will never meet, ever, to live under a certain set of new codes. And then hypocritically claiming to want to be left alone to live life their own way, that they don’t really care what everyone else does.

We’re way too tolerant of this. Once it crosses into out-and-out lying, it’s no longer virtuous to be tolerant of it. And I’m sorry, once you’re protesting for your right to wear a tuxedo to the prom when you’re a girl, that’s not about being left alone to live your own life in a manner of your choosing. That’s about being a walking fucking billboard.

The FARK kids, seldom correct but never in doubt, are outraged. Something about constitutional protections. We-ell…back in the day, I didn’t go. Couldn’t get a date. Not hip, with-it, handsome, rich enough…so no prom for Morgie. The cool kids got to go, and hey, that’s life.

Actually, the atheists ought to just love that arrangement. That’s a microcosm of how evolution is supposed to work, isn’t it? The non-social, anti-social, strange weak specimens fail to breed, die off, and strengthen the gene pool by removing themselves from it…right?

Naturally it comes as a bit of a surprise to me that we have a constitutional right to go to a gay atheist prom.

I can’t wait to find out how, when and where Ms. Carr found time to go door-to-door throughout all of Mississippi, yell the word “atheist” at them, and then watch a majority of them tremble in terror. Wonder what kind of majority it was that trembled, just a bare 51% majority, or a huge two-thirds supermajority.

Something tells me someone’s been ignorantly talking out of their own ass about southerners — AGAIN. Could someone get the word out that Lee surrendered at Appomattox and it’s okay to stop shooting?

The gift, to sponsor one of several privately sponsored alternate events, came from the American Humanist Association, an advocacy group whose mission is to promote “good without God.”

Pardon my French, but puhleeze…not this shit again. Where do people get the asinine notion that words like “good” and “evil” have any meaning whatsoever without a fixed point of moral reference – i.e. God? Without a Lawgiver, there is no Law; without a Judge there is no comeuppance for evildoers and no reward for the righteous. It begs the question, “With no God, what is the point of being good?”

I have a friend who thinks like this. He is atheist yet is nonetheless big on something he calls “morality.” I have been unable to nail down what the word means to him. I once asked him, “If you don’t believe there is anyone waiting to judge you on the other side, what is the point of being good in this life? He said, “I don’t know.”

Without a fixed point of reference and an objective moral code which comes from somewhere outside mankind, morality, good, and evil are reduced to nothing more than personal preferences. Period. The tired cliche, “Morality is defined by individual choice” reduces right and wrong to nothing more than subjective feelings, not objective standards.

Sorry to grab that point and run with it, but this absurd idea is one of those things that really burns my toast. My skin crawls and my teeth itch when I hear or read it.
- cylarz | 04/02/2010 @ 01:48
Should that be my next bumper sticker?

Progressives
Seldom correct, but never in doubt.
- philmon | 04/02/2010 @ 13:31
[…] Read it. We’re way too tolerant of this. Once it crosses into out-and-out lying, it’s no longer virtuous to be tolerant of it. And I’m sorry, once you’re protesting for your right to wear a tuxedo to the prom when you’re a girl, that’s not about being left alone to live your own life in a manner of your choosing. That’s about being a walking fucking billboard. […]
- DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Mississippi ACLU Returns $20,000 for Alternate Prom | 04/07/2010 @ 03:45

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Mississippi ACLU Returns $20,000 for Alternate PromThursday, April 1st, 2010

Mississippi ACLU Returns $20,000 for Alternate Prom
Thursday, April 1st, 2010