Article 3. [Freedom in religion; right and duty of religious worship]
That all persons have a natural and unalienable right, to worship Almighty God, according to the dictates of their own consciences and understandings, as in their opinion shall be regulated by the word of God; and that no person ought to, or of right can be compelled to attend any religious worship, or erect or support any place of worship, or maintain any minister, contrary to the dictates of conscience…
—Vermont Constitution, 1793
Really wish we could have got that “or erect or support” clause in the US Constitution. Would have made for some interesting court arguments about tax exempt status.
Al Jazeera - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)Information for Al Jazeera:
> MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: Medium - Factual Reporting: Mixed - Qatar
> Wikipedia about this source
Big difference between the original atomic bombs he’s talking about and current (or even decades-old) thermonuclear weapons. This is just ignorant rambling from someone that wants to be “smart”.
Meanwhile, Annie Jacobsen has a recent book on exactly this subject that has been making the rounds these past months. Those two have to be living in a small bubble to not know about this book.
Fun fact. While I worked as a prison officer, an inmate was escorted to a back room of the medical area and beaten handcuffed while 9 people listened. I reported it and nothing happened. None of the 9 people besides myself corroborated the attack. Then my warden denied my transfer request and attempted to kill me by putting me back under the command of the person I had reported for abuse.
My mother after I quit tried to pressure me to go back repetitively. Or take a job at another facility. I told her to look me in the eye while I say this, I would rather kill myself than do that again. Only evil people can stay at a job like that.
I have mixed feelings on this. I grew up in a secular setting as my father had long ago given up on religion and my mother seemed ambivalent about it.
As an adult, I moved to a new city with my wife who is religious, though non-evangelical. She never tried to push me into it but would disappear every Sunday morning. But after a decade or so of feeling like a stranger in my adopted city, I attended a service where I discovered they were in desperate need for musicians. So I wound up volunteering some time and in the process, met a lot of people, and one thing led to another. Today, I do have friends in the city, play in various bands around town, etc.
Yet I still haven’t really bought into religion. I guess the value to me is that it gets my introverted ass out of the house and meeting people irl. As a community institution, it brings together people of varying ages and demographics. But it comes with a huge amount of baggage which I could frankly do without?
I just hope that if religion fades away, there will still be something at the community level that gathers together people regularly from all walks of life. There are all sorts of special interest groups, but many of these do not necessarily attract a wide cross-section of society.
Whatever the case, when a church closes as a religious institution, I hope that it can be repurposed to some other activity that is still community-building?
Whatever the case, when a church closes as a religious institution, I hope that it can be repurposed to some other activity that is still community-building?
There’s one church a few blocks away from here that went out of business a few years ago and is now being used as a homeless shelter by an area non-profit. I walk by it all the time and have seen the before/after. The property is finally being put to a use that helps humanity and the the neighborhood is much better off for it.
He was proclaimed innocent of grooming. Because he did not groom her. Do people not know basic details of a case before they start spouting nonsense on the internet?
I’m amazed that you are trying to take the high ground here.
According to the case notes, the attraction was mutual
It’s irrelevant if the child is willing, they are not old enough to make those choices. She was 12 and had no capacity to agree to sex with a 19 year old. Especially one that gave her alcohol.
Like, stop talking about research start using a modicum of common sense.
I actually think a core part of being republican has to do with hating someone and feeling superior to them. It can revolve around sex, education, accent, culture, religion, sexual orientation, government structure, or skin color, but they have to hate on someone. You can plot the generations of conservatives by who they (primarily) hate at any given time.
They have to wrap themselves in their hate-blanket and fantasize about how they’ll have their AR-15 locked and loaded when the baddies come around. First they need to be scared, so they make up stories and lies about how “the other” corrupted their children, stole their jobs, took the government assistance, or performed DDOS on their interview, and then talk with friends or family on how evil the other is. Then they get great pleasure in having a big hate-orgy and trying hard to “trigger a liberal” spewing their made up hysterical bullshit.
A short list who’s-who hate list for conservatives: communists, socialists, civil rights activists, labor unions, abortion rights people and doctors, environmentalists, academics, immigrants, “the gays” (all LGBTQ+ individuals), muslims, transgender people, “mainstream media”. They’ve got to hate someone.
It’s why I don’t think humanity will ever get along unless an external, immediate threat unites us. Aliens or something.
What like a foreign dictatorship meddling in your democratic process? Or maybe that’s not existential enough - what about an urgent planetary climate crisis caused by a greedy minority trying to steal or planet’s limited resources to turn into useless stock?
Hmm, probably, but I feel like humanity would largely come together, or split into two camps.
I would envision either “everyone against the demons”, and the few who are with them are a small, covert minority, kind of like criminals, or humanity splitting into two camps, which would still be division, but arguably less divided than how we currently are.
To this point, how could we increase the number of people who take the side of humanity?
My thinking is that reducing anomie and inequality, increasing the bonds between people, all help move that number in a positive direction, as more of us realise that we need eachother.
This is my sneaky way of saying that we could be doing this now. That sure, maybe there will always be those who are just in it for themselves or a tiny in-group, but that’s no excuse for fatalism/doomerism.
IE we don’t have to wait for baleful aliens or demons spewing forth from hellgates. If we’re not waiting for the perfect unifying scenario, we can start moving the needle in a positive direction now. :)
Before that I only went to small banks but they kept getting bought out by bigger ones every year my bank got bigger and bigger until I had a shit national bank again.
I’ve never gotten a hold of a gym manager faster than when I reported them to my bank for fraudulently charging an account they said they’d removed from their system.
I've only been a member of two gyms, and they both let me out of my membership over the phone. One was 24hr Fitness in WA, and the other was some big chain in AZ (can't remember which one)
This, I support criminal rehabilitation but only if you’ve served your time correctly, never expected this to be condoned in Europe amongst other places, I think he deserves to at least serve his full conviction time
Her political career IS dead. She lost her seat, so is no longer an active politician.
This is all to push her book, which has been widely panned by practically everyone that isn’t a brain-dead moron. I genuinely would love to know how many thick cunts are in that room with her, because they are truly up there with Clacton in being the dumbest people in the country.
news
Active
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.