Sunday cat: the impossibility of perfection

Sometimes sharing is too hard.

Turn the sound off before you start it!

“Homosexual-led persecution of church”

A joke, right? We all know the attitude of many Christian churches is too close to persecution of homosexuals; see here and here, for example.  How could such malign actions possibly be going in the other direction? 

And plenty of religious groups opposed even secular “gay acceptance” activities, thus trying to prevent efforts to diminish the cruel and sometimes lethal persecution gays do suffer.

But, no, some people apparently actually maintain that homosexuals are persecuting churches. And the nature of the persecution is quite ironic. Most persecution is at least ostensibly to get rid of something. But homosexuals are persecuting churches in order to join them and to get them to stop their discriminatory behavior.  As NPR, quoted by the blog linked to immediately above, put it:

In recent years, some states have passed laws giving residents the right to same-sex unions in various forms. Gay couples may marry in Massachusetts and California. There are civil unions and domestic partnerships in Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Oregon. Other states give more limited rights.

Armed with those legal protections, same-sex couples are beginning to challenge policies of religious organizations that exclude them, claiming that a religious group’s view that homosexual marriage is a sin cannot be used to violate their right to equal treatment. Now parochial schools, “parachurch” organizations such as Catholic Charities and businesses that refuse to serve gay couples are being sued — and so far, the religious groups are losing.

When suing for your civil rights is presented as persecuting, watch out! You may well be in the Orwellian land of the far right.

Update: the VA and health care for women vets

Thanks to Ms for this update on women vets’ health care,which we discussed here:

Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake said on Friday that the agency is working to improve the health care offered to women vets. The announcement follows an internal VA study that found that female veterans have more difficulty obtaining quality outpatient healthcare than their male counterparts.

“We are making a full-court press to ensure that women veterans receive the highest quality of care,” Peake said, according to the Associated Press.

There has been a consistent air of understatement in the announcements about women and health care. Have a look at travelvet’s comments in our previous post and see if that looks like a story about her having “more difficulty.” “Incapable of getting care needed to save her life” is more like it.