Stolen from Alisa… More WTF-ness courtesy of your friendly religious right.

What. The. Hell.

I assume most of you have already heard of this.

I still think the church and Catholics are overreacting.

Firstly, the church gave him the Eucharist willingly with the assumption that he would eat it… thus it no longer belonged to the church but rather to him and he could do whatever he wanted with it (including, if desired, not eat it).
Secondly, the use of force to attempt to recover the Eucharist from him could (and I feel, should) be charged as assault and attempted robbery.

Yes, I feel what he did was extremely disrespectful… but only to certain religious groups (Catholics… since people who don’t believe in the divinity of the Eucharist believe that he walked off with a cracker, which is not at all offensive) thus making it a religious issue.
The university should absolutely not be involved in this matter (in particular since the group receiving university funds means they must be open to all students regardless). There are no grounds for any disciplinary actions from the university. The fact that he’s receiving death threats is absolutely insane.

Look, not everyone shares your beliefs. It would be awesome if everyone would respect each others’ beliefs but that’s not always the case.

I often call myself Pastafarian. What if I was to host a spaghetti dinner in honor of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and claim that each plate actually became the body of god… what if this dinner was funded by student activities fees… and what if you came in (given that you have just as much right as everyone else) and walked out with a plate of spaghetti instead of eating it (given that it was being freely given out to eat).
Is that a hate crime? I seriously doubt anyone would call it that. What you did was disrespectful of my beliefs, yes, but I would certainly not classify it as theft or a crime. What if I attempted to pry your hands off the plate… is that assault? Almost certainly.

Religion does weird things to people. Things like this are what make me glad I’m not religious (and wish most of the world wasn’t either).

Also, completely unrelatedly, oh dear.

Edit: To clarify a bit…
I feel like what he did was wrong, but the church’s reaction was completely uncalled for, and that’s what I’m taking issue with here.

“We don’t know 100% what Mr. Cooks motivation was,” said Susan Fani a spokesperson with the local Catholic diocese. “However, if anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it.”

We just expect the University to take this seriously,” she added “To send a message to not just Mr. Cook but the whole community that this kind of really complete sacrilege will not be tolerated.”

That is absolutely insane. WTF.

Gonzalez said the Diocese is willing to meet with Cook and help him understand the importance of the Eucharist in hopes of him returning it.

That is completely reasonable.

For a student to disrupt Mass by taking the Body of Christ hostage–regardless of the alleged nature of his grievance–is beyond hate speech. That is why the UCF administration needs to act swiftly and decisively in seeing that justice is done. All options should be on the table, including expulsion.

That is also completely insane (moreso than the first quote).
People calling for procecution (jail time and fines) are completely insane.
People giving him death threats are insane.
People trying to inject their beliefs into the secular state to levy civil penalties against him in an obviously faith-based case are insane.

That’s the kind of overreaction I’m talking about, what what is really bothering me about this.

I promised I’d post new apartment piccars, so here they are…

The hallway when you first exit the elevators. It looks like a hotel. (I mean, the place even has a 24/7 concierge who has fresh-baked cookies on weekdays.)

Hallway

When you first enter our apartment. Em’s room is to the left, kitchen is left-ish, living room is right-ish, my room is to the right.

Our kitchen is pretty.

Our living room has nice track lighting and overlooks the bay and the bay bridge (at least, I think it’s that bridge).

I love our new apartment :D

Hmm

I’m curious what peoples’ thoughts on this are.

Personally, I would say that, as wrong as the mother was, CPS has no right to remove her children based on her beliefs.
If they’re trying to argue that raising your children in an environment where they’re taught hatred is abuse, then they’d better start removing the children of all those fundamentalists now before they’re taught to hate teh gay. Oh noes.

I also like her statement:

A black person has a right to say black power or black pride and yet they’re turning around on us and saying we’re racists and bigots and neo-Nazis because we say white pride. It’s hypocrisy at its finest.

This is all too true. The issue, perhaps, is that white pride is typically associated with violence and hatred towards other ethnic groups… but there is no evidence here of that. They removed her children based purely on the fact that she was proud of her heritage… they didn’t even show that she was teaching them to hate (so even that argument hasn’t been proven to be valid).

So yeah. They haven’t shown abuse or neglect in any way.
I dunno.
I feel like the government is in the wrong in this particular case.