Seriously, This Actually Happened, I'm Flabbergasted

Okay, let's play a little game. It's called Offend the Fundy. The rules are simple. You have to offend an American Christian fundamentalist, but you can't just shout obscenities or walk around naked or wear a shirt that says, "I've had 25 abortions". No, you need to offend them by doing or saying something that no rational person would find offensive.

Here, I'll provide an example:

Wow... This was a question on a quiz I just took.

Find the effective thesis.
Answer

A. The subject of my paper is God in public schools.

B. School prayer is totally stupid and should stay banned.

C. Prayer is asking God for something or thanking Him for something.

D. High school graduation ceremonies should not include prayer.

This in my online Writing Composition class, and the only class I'm taking online this semester. I can't decide if I should say something to the teacher or not....The answer is D but I'm not going to submit that as an answer. We need all the prayer in schools we can get!

If your reaction that was O.o, you're never going to win a round of Offend the Fundy!

I found this on Rapture Ready's message boards, and I fully expected at least one person to point out that the teacher was not asking this person to agree that prayer in school is wrong, they were asking the student to pick the best thesis. (I suspect about 30% of that board is atheists in disguise like me.) Nope. Not even close.

Woah that's bad Definitely say something to the teacher! And what respectable school would use the expression "totally stupid"? Do they use phrases like "kinda cool" in their papers as well?

I'll take Totally Missing the Point for 100, Alex! (does that emoticon move? it's freaking me out.)

It's the teacher who makes these test and then puts them online for the class. I don't know what I should do, but I am pretty mad about this.

I can't stand it that my Lord who has done so much for me and who I love is made fun of on a daily basis.

In a class that I actually go to, we had to make a flyer for a make believe band in Photoshop class. The guy who is next to me made a flyer mocking the Cross. I just get so tired of them mocking my Lord!

Sure. I just bet the flyer was a picture of a bin Laden and Richard Dawkins pointing at a cross and laughing.

Always do what is right with the Lord. Do not give humans any power or let them take you away from what you believe in.

Did this guy even read the original post?

My hubby says you should appeal to the school board about this on the basis of religious discrimination. Alternatively you should definitely speak to the teacher, also tell him/her that "totally stupid" is not a proper use of English in an academic paper and shouldn't even be given to students as a bad example.

Religious discrimination? Seriously? Can I claim religious discrimination every times someone says "bless you" when I sneeze? It would be the same thing.

Technically the answer is D

But you could demonstrate the idea easily with hundreds of other topics, so why did the teacher deliberately pick the subject of prayer in schools and then make the correct answer one which is anti-God?

Sigh. I feel for you

Oh, I don't know. Maybe because that's the sort of thing that actually gets debated, so in a class about rhetoric, it'll come up.

Anyway, this goes on for a while, and then a M. Night stops by and delivers the best twist he's thought of since Fight Club, in the form of a reply from the teacher:

You are not expected to go against your beliefs to answer a question. I do not view my role as a teacher in that way. I have never tried to indoctrinate my students or force any sort of values on them. I do hope to model Christ to my students, as well as everyone with whom I interact, but it is not ever my role to tell people how to believe or feel.

That's right, this teacher is Christian. Seriously Christian. Conservative Christian. Like, listens to Rush Limbaugh conservative.

This question was not asking you to agree or disagree with the statements at all. Rather, it was simply asking you to choose which one followed the instructions of what makes a good thesis. I respect your views, and I share very similar conservative views. Choosing not to answer a question because you do not like the subject matter, when you are not being asked to agree with something that is against your morals and principles, is not something that I can really understand. I did not ask you to write a paragraph against school prayer, for example. However, in the academic world, you may be asked sometime to take the opposing side. As someone who listens exclusively to Christian radio or conservative political radio, I can say that those Christian commentators can discuss the issues and even present points that the opposition might. For example, they can pose questions that an Athiest might pose because they know they have to anticipate the opposition's points in order to successfully counter those arguments. They don't simply refuse to engage in discourse because the topic is distasteful.

Amazing! Does it matter to the raptards? Of course not. They're too busy congratulating one another for being so sensitive they could feel the pea under the mattress from five miles away. I'm trying to figure out exactly when Christianity became a big game of "who could be offended more by less". I'd say sometime in the last 30 years, but I bet it's been this way since Paul wrote letters to everyone with a name.

Back Away From the Keyboard, Ma'am

I don't often get outraged. It's just not something I do. It takes a lot of energy for one thing, and I like to save mine for fun stuff, and I have a bizarre sense of humor, so you're more likely to amuse me than outrage me. So, maybe I just don't understand this post because I have an abnormally low sense of outrage. (Like a low WBC count or something.) Or, maybe some people need to back away from the keyboard and take a few Xanax before their heads explode.

The backstory to this is, and honestly I don't even know if this is true, because I don't really care, is that on passports, parents will be listed as "Parent 1" and "Parent 2"* rather than "mother" and "father". Now see if you can reconcile this minor wording change with the vitriole it engenders:

I'm outraged by this. I am not either "parent one" or "parent two" to my beautiful daughters. I AM THEIR MOTHER. And I have the legal right to be recognized as such by every national, state, and local agency that ever has the authority to collect any such information from me.

I'm actually not sure you have a defined legal right to have agencies refer to you as "mother". I actually asked my boss. He laughed, shook his head and walked away. I did a quick check in the Constitution. Nothing there.

Anyway, wtf do you care? Does this person think that, due to a wording change on an official document, our entire society is going to stop using the word "mother"? Does she think motherhood itself will disappear and possibly also her children?

Look, here's reality. We're living in it, whether you like it or not. (Frequently, I do not.) There are people raising children who do not fall into the role of mother and father. Hey, I was one of them for years. My husband and I raised my niece for a number of years**. We were not "mother" and "father". We were parental figures, to be sure, just not mother and father. But that's not what our friend is so outraged about. Can you guess what it is she so outraged by?

If two gay men are raising one or the other's biological child or a child they've adopted, or a child they paid a reproductive prostitute to manufacture for them, they can call themselves the child's "fathers," plural, until the cows come home. The child still has one father. And if two lesbians are raising a child as stated above, they can also insist on being "Mommy One" and "Mommy Two" to the poor child they are raising. The child has one mother--either one of them, or a woman who gave the baby up for adoption, or a reproductive prostitute who was paid to manufacture a child for them. No human being on the planet has more than one actual father and one actual mother; no human being has ever been born as the result of the genetic combination of two sperm cells or two egg cells.

Ah, Teh Gai. Feel the Christian love, so indistinguishable from hate. Watch as it drips down your screen like maggots from a bloated corpse. Luffly, isn't it? Here's the thing: I could buy her argument that adoptive gay parents are not mothers and/or fathers, except that I guarantee you she would say no such things about heterosexual adoptive parents, who are also, technically, not mothers and/or fathers to their children. Adoptive heterosexuals are mothers and/or fathers, adoptive homosexuals are not.

And god(s) forbid anyone mistake her for a gay person, which, in her bizarre world, could possibly happen with the new Parent 1 and Parent 2 designations. I have a suggestion, oh hateful one: carry around pictures of your children emerging from your vagina, as well as a picture of you and your husband having sex. Show them to everyone who sees these passports so they do not mistake your for a homosexual person. Have "I am not a faggot" tattooed on your forehead so the rest of us, who have no reason to see your childrens' passports, will know as well. Quite frankly, I would appreciate knowing exactly who to stay the hell away from.

*Who did not immediately think of Thing 1 and Thing 2? I want to be Parent 1 or Parent 2 and I want my passport photo to clearly show the special sweater I will buy for just that occasion. See, I'm amused, not outraged.

**Proudest Parent 2 moment: my niece texted me during the Eagles game yesterday (yes, I am still weeping bitterly) to beg me to update her on the game because her mother had changed the channel. I love that kid.

No, Actually It Was Never Easier

Filed under Revering Pasts that Never Were, we have this screed against assisted reproduction (i.e., IVF, surrogacy, etc.):

At some point, anticipated and even feared by some parents, every child asks the inevitable question: “Where did I come from?” That question is endemic to humanity. The question of our own biological origins is eventually inescapable. Our existence requires an explanation, and the question takes bold form. The answer used to be easy.

That is, the answer was easy in terms of biology. In some form, the answer took the shape of a story about two people, one male and one female, who came together and made a baby. Mommy and Daddy made a baby. That story was both true and universal. For most of human history, there was no alternative account. The answer given by parents in 1960 was the same as that given in 1060 or in any previous year.

Except not. Keep in mind, the number of children, in the US, conceived through assisted reproduction* is quite small. Reproductive assistance is prohibitively expensive, for one thing, and most people don't need it, for another. You know what number is far larger? The number of children being raised by men not their biological fathers who don't know they aren't the biological father**. That's a complicated explanation of someone's existence. A certain number of women have and raise their rapist's child, as well. That's not something I would ever want to explain to a child. That's complicated. A wee bit more complicated, to me anyway, than "Mommy and Daddy (or Mommy or Mommy and Mommy or Daddy and Daddy) had trouble making a baby so they got a doctor to help."

You know what? What is so complicated about "Mommy and Daddy (or Mommy or Mommy and Mommy or Daddy and Daddy) had trouble making a baby so they got a doctor to help." You don't have to explain the exact intricacies of IVF to a child. It's not like a small child would understand that if you did. I just don't see the necessity for pearl clutching in this situation. Oh, right, evangelical Christians. They're just not happy if they don't have a death grip on a string of fake pearls.

*Major league reproductive assistance like IVF and surrogacy, as opposed to less dramatic assistance like hormonal therapy. I don't think anyone has a problem with hormonal therapy. Yet.

**Unfortunately, the MRAs have taken over on this one, so a google search turns up a number between 1 in 25 and 1 in 5. I somehow don't think it's 20% of all children, but it is more common than IVF successes.