They were threatening castration...

Fucking Nazis.

Poland has approved forcible castrations for pedophiles and other sexual assailants.

Honestly, my initial reaction was "why chemical castration? Lets string them up by their sexual organs (internal or otherwise)." I mean we should take all steps necessary to protect people from being trespassed upon in the most private way possible -- especially those that cannot protect themselves. And that's what the bill is aimed at. And laws like this are concurrent with the American government's view on sexual material containing children: one of the reasons for the zero-tolerance approach to fighting child pornography (other than the obvious need to protect children from becoming victims of such heinous things) is because child-pornography (more than any other type of pornography) encourages sexual crimes. What better way to discourage crime than to simply remove the urge to commit the crime?

Sometimes, I'll get poo-poo'd on when I bring up the purpose of our corrections department. However, the original intent in the United States was to rehabilitate criminals. Now, I'll absolutely concede that we have moved away from that, and we now use it as a tool to defer, and more commonly to punish. But if we take the stated view of prison as the reason for sentencing people (that we are to rehabilitate rather than exploit), this type of legislation would fly in the face of our stated goals.

But that's not why I would oppose such legislation here in America. It may just be my jaded view, but I know that we would castrate the wrong people. In America, children can be charged with statutory rape if there is a greater than 2 year difference between those engaging in sex. While I don't think a 17 year old should be sleeping with a 15 year old, I don't think the term rape should apply. I'd say the same thing about an 18 year old sleeping with a 16 or 17 year old.

Now, there's no indication that Poland tends to use the forced castration in this manner, but you couldn't convince me that the American justice system can be trusted to use this option correctly in all circumstances. We have not shown the greatest restraint or reason with extreme punishments in the past.

This news hits the same week that we've been confronted with Mackenzie Phillips' allegations of incest -- the most egregious form of sexual assault and a violation of trust. As sick as sexual assault in all of its forms is to me, incest is one of two crimes that just makes me hate humanity (the other being child-rape). And being forced to confront these evil things does not make my opposition to the Polish legislation any easier...Hell, one of the most egregious crimes from Poland's recent past was committed by the sick and deranged Josef Fritzl. But no matter how rape and incest make us feel, it is important to note the damage that castration (even of the chemical kind) can do. Although we have learned that we can reverse some of the effects of chemical castration, there is no guarantee that a reversal of the procedure can be achieved -- and more importantly, in some rare cases, it is possible to be more physically aroused after being castrated. Does that really fix the problem?

Are we gonna split hairs here?

The Freakin' Deacon

Please rise for the hymn of the day.

What's Happening Now? Dance Party Edition

Not much needs to be said about this video. Watching people dance just generally makes me incredibly happy. We need more dancing, choreographed or not. Although the idea of "spontaneous" public dancing needs to be done more.



Put on your dancing shoes kiddos.

Refocusing and Re-energizing and hymn of the day

The above phrase is something that has become somewhat of a mantra for me. I think there's certain things that some people need to take the time to learn again. I'm currently learning that this is something I need to do as a father as well as someone looking for a job (cross your fingers for me, would you please?).

I figure this would be a good thing for me to do as a blogger as well. We just haven't been getting the updates as frequently as I'd like. So I'm hoping to blog it out once a week.

So in keeping with the Church theme, I'm going to try and focus on updating on Sundays. It would mean only one update a week, but honestly, that's more than we've been known to update. So now that the blog is over a year old, and we have a small gathering, I'd like to turn things around a little.

As for Science, Ian, and the other contributors, they can update as they wish, but I really hope to build the blog's readership.

I'd also like to take the time to re-post the very first posting we had here. I guess it's the closest thing we have to a mission statement, and it's something that I'm kind of proud of as it really sums up what we're all about. We're not a church that promotes one way of worship, but all ways of worship.

The First Church of Reason:

Welcome to our Church. We are a collection of Agnostics, Atheists, and Theists of all kinds. Our mission is simple: we want to create a new way of worship that exercises reason and praises beauty. We celebrate music, art, literature, film, culture, society, faith, history, honor, friendship, love, family and many other things of this and other worlds. This blog will be used as a place where we can openly and publicly celebrate these ideals, and show when they are being trespassed upon. Thanks for looking, and Welcome to the Church of What's Happening Now.

We're a Winner!

Hymn of the Day

There has been no mention of Iran here. I really didn't know how to communicate my feelings on this. But this is just the most egregious thing I have learned about the post-election demonstrations. Apparently the imperial royal guard has charged the family of a dead protester a bullet fee.

This is a very old practice that has a lot of meaning. I'm not a History professor, so you're gonna have to either trust me, google it, or learn symbolism. But this is something that has only been done by the worst guys (well, maybe not the worst guy).

I'm not going to proselytize, but I would like to offer my thoughts to the Iranian people -- people that are fighting and dying for something many in the United States take for granted, or just ignore.

Thomas Paine would wring Beck's neck!

just...ugh

The two-party problem

Many of my friends and family members know I'm yearning for a Republican candidate I can vote for. The closest I have come to voting for the big R was in 2008 with John McCain, and frankly that wasn't even close. Social conservatives and neo-cons have made the Republican pretty toxic.

It's not that I hate the Democratic party, but I am on the other side of the aisle when it comes to government size and spending. Of course the problem with this line of thinking is that Karl Rove and GWB's vision of a small government isn't much different than Barack Obama and Bill Clinton's vision of a large government; the spending is pretty close to being the same in non-stimulus years (a product of an administration drunk on essence of money-juice). So the proper response to all of those crazy problems we had to deal with in the wake of incredible fiscal irresponsibility (especially in the view of a Democrat) was to spend our way out of it, something I was begrudgingly on board with (given the size and scope of the problem, we had to do something, and damned if I knew what it was). And we're all familiar with the conservative refrain: Obama=Socialist.

Uncle Sam wants you driving one of his cars, writing checks at one of his banks, and using his health insurance. Are we saving the economy or headed toward socialism?

Now that's silly. The government trying to protect American wealth and conserve jobs is not socialism, especially given that these specific reactions were to very unique problems. If anything, this environment is closer to Corporatism than anything resembling socialism. But when I was lurking around the lefty blogs, this was a response offered by Liberal blogger John Amoto of crooksandliars.com (as well as the response given to anything even remotely bad that a democrat has done lately)

I'd like to remind Chris Wallace that Uncle Sam under George Bush gave us terrorist attacks, two wars, torture, illegal wiretapping, a stock market crash and almost destroyed the world's global financial markets and much much more in eight years. I could think of many more, but you get the idea.

Now, I'm certainly no GWB fan, but this cannot be the response to each and every hiccup this administration faces. It makes me angry that people think this is an answer to anything that is happening today. I mean (I know it's a long-shot, but,) what happens if in 2012, we all agree that Barack Obama is the worst president ever? No discussion, we just know, Obama is the worst president ever. What happens then? Is the answer still going to be "well it's GWB's fault!" That's just stupid, and it helps nothing.

EDIT::: To be clear, there are several Republicans I would -- and even a scant few that I have -- voted for, I meant for President. Sorry for the confusion.