QUICKIES 02/06/2012
By There’s an extensive, sad article in Rolling Stone about anti-gay bigotry, school bullying, and culture war politics in Anoka, Minnesota, called One Town’s War on Gay Teens.
Here is a satirical video called Women for Santorum that mocks Santorum’s recent comments that becoming pregnant after a rape means God is trying to give you a gift.
In the week since the Komen foundation announced they would no longer provide grant money to Planned Parenthood to screen for breast cancer (a noted departure from their previous anti-cancer stance), Planned Parenthood has not only raised enough money to completely replace all their annual grant funding; they’ve raised three million dollars! Don’t mess with Planned Parenthood!
Some bad news, but some good. Anoka is unfortunate enough to be in a pocket of evangelical crazies, but the tide is turning on a larger scale. Even with all the local pressure, national pressure is beginning to swing the other way, which will hopefully mean that pockets of intolerance will get fewer as time goes on. And now that light has been shed on this one, I strongly suspect that it’s going to change rather quickly. Let’s just hope some light can be shined on other at-risk locations before they face their own waves of suicides.
The story about Planned Parenthood is certainly reassuring, and is also a good example of societal views shifting for the better. Perhaps it’s just the rage at such an obviously wrong action that’s driving this, but I’d like to think that evangelical influence is waning.