August 18, 2006

• I like the idea -- risk of right-wing spam aside -- but no doubt the link will be farked soon, and their generous offer rescinded. Just like that 'make your own Bush-Cheney sign' thing.
• They prob'ly wouldn't ship outside of the states anyway. /sour grapes
• Pick a random address inside the States and have it shipped there.
• I like the core of your idea, Weez. It's a deliciously evil way to get them thinking their message is getting out, and in the mean while it's just getting trashed. Yes, very nice. I know exactly who to send many copies to as well.
• BD084 Sex Begins in the Kitchen 1 13.00 13.00 BL276 The Married Guy's Guide to Great Sex 1 20.00 20.00 P00412V The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 1 30.00 30.00 ISFEE International Service Fee 10.00 10.00 Total shipped to Mr. roryk: $ 73.00 cheers! they apparently will ship internationally.
• "The Resource Center is closed". Dammit. Didn't even realize I could get Narnia. All I was thinking about was the gay stuff.
• They shut the resource centre WHILE I WAS STILL SHOPPING!! See if I ever buy anything from there again. * snorts *
• yes they closed it on my too! Bastards! Don't they know it is better to give than receive? Why do they go against God's teachings????
• They must have known that my work ethic is decidedly not Protestant.
• You know, you guys should know better than to launch a DoS attack on their website. You have to be subtle. Order 1 or 2 little things each week and dont' tell anybody what you are doing. Eventually you'll have burned thousands of dollars worth of merchandise. Now the opportunity is gone because you went with an over-the-top frontal assault.
• I want a copy of Narnia. I left mine in Canada.
• I got Narnia and a "don't have sex" book for girls. Yay! The book is particularly fun because I'm writing a paper about body manuals for girls, and this will be an interesting, completely insane example (and I thought the American Girls manual was conservative!). Thanks for the link!
• Another potential Mrs. Renault Googles the captain and finds: "All I was thinking about was the gay stuff" ...and that's the end of that.
• BD084 Sex Begins in the Kitchen 1 13.00 13.00 Just what kind of prevert christians are those?
• Even non-Christians know sex begins with a wire whisk and a spatula.
• Not a turkey baster?
• The Narnia books are all audio. Does their target audience not know how to fucking read?
• Its not a Bible, and most probably haven't even read that.
• "Please note that the suggested donation amount does not necessarily reflect the fair market value." What a scam! (i did it though. sent away for the ultimate family fun pack. i can't wait.)
• You must report back.
• Its not a Bible, and most probably haven't even read that. Yeah, I've read that. The plot is contrived and a little hard to follow, and the main character dies in the end, but I was shocked to find out that Snape was the Half-Blood Prince. Whoda thunk?
• You know what? Since I did finally click on the family.org link, I had to conclude that they were relatively harmless. Yes, they do have some books, which one can order if one is interested, that are homophobic. But, there are no fiery sermons that I could find about hell and damnation for transgressors. But, they also advocate remembering the Bilblical injunction to help the poor and remind parents to demonstrate a parent's love. If we wanted to target rabidly homophobic sites, this one seems like the least deserving of our wrath. I don't follow their religion, and don't agree with their take on homosexuality, but they are very mild, and don't appear to be one of those megachurches which broadcast hate messages to the masses. Sadly, any attack we may have fostered won't change their minds, but could make them more radical in their opinions on homosexuality.
• PS. They seem like nice people, nowever misguided we might think they are.
• Does their target audience not know how to fucking read? Maybe the target audience is elderly people with failing eyesight?
• I'm elderly, with the usual eyesight issues, but I can still read most of what's on the internets if I hold my glasses at the right angle. Strains my eyes, but what the hell.
• Sorry, just got here. Long story--busy with a whisk and spatula and uh, well, long story. So, have any theological implications been staggered yet?
• Path: No, they're not nice. Besides the proselytizing, they're a large (perhaps the biggest?) lobby against LGBT rights. They make things difficult for queers everywhere, in general.
• path - I grew up with a parent who was really into Focus on the Family, at the time, and they're NOT nice and harmless, though they are often significantly less annoying than some other, similar groups. They're homophobic & anti-choice, and they do in fact broadcast hate messages. However, this is on their widely-carried radio shows, not in a megachurch. (One thing I recall hearing from James Dobson, many years ago, was that Rome fell "because most emperors were homosexual pederasts.") When I was a teenager, I got two young women's magazines in the mail. One was Sassy, which was kind of "alternative" and which I loved, and the other was Brio, FOTF's own teen girl mag, which was simpy and useless and managed to totally misunderstand the wider culture. (It was full of devotionals, moralizing short stories along the lines of "no, engaged Xian couples don't have sex!", and interviews with Xian pop stars or occasionally Kirk Cameron.) Dobson eventually led a boycott of Sassy, primarily because it was progressive. The only similar magazine these days is Bust, for adult women; a lot of former Sassy readers consider it the only true successor (though Sassy had much less sexual content, basically mostly health articles). Sassy started out as an American version of an Australian magazine called Dolly which tried to have the voice of a hip older sister; it was initially also considered a junior offshoot of Ms, and was unabashedly feminist. Anyway, in 1994ish, Dobson asked audience members to boycott Sassy's advertisers: the resulting small number of letters caused several key advertisers to withdraw their business from Sassy, which wound up being sold to the same company that made the vapid, ditzy 'TEEN, and turned into a clone of 'TEEN for slightly older readers. Because Dobson didn't agree with the content, instead of saying to his readers, "I wouldn't buy this magazine for your teenage daughter; buy mine instead," he had to take it a step further and say "Because I wouldn't buy this magazine for your teenage daughter if I were you, no teen girl should have access to it" - disregarding that many of us got nothing out of his platitute-laden rag, and found Sassy to be a fantastic, helpful, joyous resource. And he's continued to do this in politics; he's an important political figure in this country. He's basically pro-theocracy, in most ways you can think of that would matter. (Some I didn't mention in the first paragraph - teaching Intelligent Design in public schools, women being subordinate to men, abstinence-only sex ed.)He's one of the most politically prominent Dominion theologists, as well... Dominion Theology suggests that "God gave Man dominion over the Earth and everything else on it" and is basically the reason why a lot of right-wing Christians think that it's OK to not preserve the environment: "God put it here for us to use up, and Jesus is coming back and ending the world soon anyway!" Dobson's support of Bush was a large part of Bush's success in evangelical Xian America. I think it's pretty scary... though yes, there are elements of the Focus ministry that are basically harmless and well-meaning. I just don't like that these people's fingers are in so many political pies, and I think the outcome of their aims, if successful, would ultimately be harmful to both the US and the rest of the world, even if those outcomes are not the intention. They do have stuff like audio plays of Les Miserables and Silas Marner. That's what I ordered, and it seems to have gone through... if it does, the items will be given to my niece or to a local children's hospital, for kids who could really use the entertainment. I didn't order anything that proselytizes the less savory aspects of FOTF's message.
• what i know about dobson's "policies": * homosexuality can be "cured" or "prevented" * wives should submit to their husbands in marriage * same-sex unions threaten hetrosexual marriage rates * spongebob squarepants should be banned for promoting teh gheyness this stuff from a guy who apparently leads the u.s. xtian block. his wikipedia bio suggests he has heavily influenced recent supreme court appointments, either by campaigning against potential justices or by making sure his favoured candidates are not blocked. all this said, there's lots of stuff on the focus on the family website that i fully agree with - be nice to your kids, tell them you support them, help them with their homework, etc. this is perhaps more insidious than the outright hatesites.
• Anyone with "family" in their title automatically sets off my cynicism detector because 9 times out of 10 anyone with "Family" or "children" in their title isn't happy about something. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_on_the_Family
• Must second verbminx. The public language is neutral, because they see what inflammatory language does for people like Fred Phelps. And yes, they're following their principles -- but so does everybody, so does Fred Phelps, so did HITL-um, anyway. I view them much the same way I view Scientology -- the people who join up are mostly good people who are missing something and want to find it, want to make the world a better place to live in. The people pulling the strings, however, are oppressive, sometimes borderline-crazy hypocritical bastards with agendas they want to shove down everyone's throats, money and power they want to sockpile. To use a Biblical analogy, they are the modern-day Pharisees.
• That would be "stockpile," of course, because "sockpiling" is what I do when the missus is out of town.
• Monkeyfilter: What I do when the missus is out of town
• But isn't getting these 'free' stuff rom those organizations 1)fatten their mailing lists, which are quite valuable to hem 2)help them show the need for bigger donations, and possible political subsidies (what if some legislators, governors, etc., sympathize with them and contritbute from their state budget?)
• Ouch. Please disregard last posts' crimes against orthodoxy orthodentistry ontology orthography and syntax. Not enough coffe yet.
• BearGuy wrote: "So, have any theological implications been staggered yet?" "Life Is Hell" fan, BearGuy?
• Shipping to: VertexOfLife BD788 One Year Book of Christian History 1 17.00 17.00 P00341B 20 Compelling Evidences That God Exists 1 15.00 15.00 BD391 So What's the Difference? 1 15.00 15.00 F00673B Dare 2 Share 1 13.00 13.00 F00673B Dare 2 Share 1 13.00 13.00 Total shipped to Vertexoflife: $ 73.00 Hahahaha, fuck yes, it's back up again. However, now you have to register for an account. Whoo, big deal, it took thirty seconds. =)
• I think you had to register for an account before. It is back up. Once you have rec'd what you ordered you can always ask to be removed from their mailing list. The person in the Stranger article said that they'd been doing this for a while without getting spammed. I used a semi-fake name on my order (a first name similar to but different from my real one) so I will know if any spam comes to me from them. I suppose I *did* ask for it, if it does.
• PS - roryk, they don't really believe in "being nice to your kids." or they do, but they believe that corporal punishment is a necessary component of that. Dobson's big arrival on the national fundie scene in the early 1970s (?ish?) was a book called Dare to Discipline, which can be summed up as "The bible says if you love your child you'll spank them." I totally disagree with it; I think spanking is wrong and both my own experience and college psychology courses have shown me to think it's a bad idea (both because it doesn't work in the intended way and because many parents don't know when to stop); however, others may agree with Dobson, and I wouldn't want to derail this thread into an argument about whether or not spanking is abusive discipline. :) The point is, Dobson made a name for himself promoting it. And to be completely fair, if you really want to raise your children to be very conservative Christians, FOTF has a ton of kid-friendly resources, as well as a ton of relatively neutral ones like the Anne of Green Gables audio plays.
• Flagpole is right. Another thing I was thinkin': what the hell am I gonna do with this Ultimate Family Fun Pack? (I'm really hoping it includes a waterslide. *crosses fingers*) I can't keep it, because I don't want it in my house. I can't give it away, because then I'd be spreading a type of propaganda that sickens me. And I can't throw it away, because I will have nightmares of being back in Catholic school. The nuns would whack me with rulers and give me The Look and God would send me to Hell. Man, that's fucked up.
• Just change those two "woulds" into "wills," ok?
• Isn't there a church near you that would be glad to have the pack (or parts that aren't a water slide?) You could insist on anonymity, or delegate someone else to deliver it. Then, the appropriate god would bless you for your generosity, and you could be comfortable in knowing that it was an ironic gift. Or, if it's not too evangelical, give it to the local parks and recreation department, or to a low-income school?
• Line a bird cage/press flowers/wrap food waste/start fires!
• path, I could... and I know some evangelicals that would love to have anything that was brand new... but wouldn't it be similar to giving heroin to an addict? (Or I could, you know, just get over it.)