Slate: 'Legalize Polygamy, I Am Not Kidding'

(NewsBusters) - Gay marriage advocates have frequently scoffed at CONservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum who say legalizing same-sex marriage will lead to the classification of other relationships as “marriage,” such as multiple spouses, incest and bestiality. Now some on the left are happily gliding down the “slippery slope.”

Slate’s April 15th article called “Legalize polygamy: No. I am not kidding," ” proposes—you guessed it—legalized polygamy. The article’s author, Jillian Keenan, stated that the problems with polygamy from certain fundamentalist Mormon circles can easily be resolved with legalizing those families. Using examples of coercion and abuse, Keenan rationalized that legalizing polygamy will allow children and women to report to the police when problems occur, instead of staying in hiding because of their illegal lifestyles.

As with drugs or prostitution, this strain of liberal thought holds that if we legalize something that is inherently harmful or risky, it will somehow become safer. But there is a reason some behaviors are proscribed by law: they aren’t healthy for society or individuals. That doesn’t seem to matter to Keenan, who claimed that whether or not these marriages are healthy “should have no bearing on the legal process.”

Keenan then appealed to religious freedom, arguing the rights of fundamentalist LDS members and Muslim families with multiple wives as being protected in the Constitution in the same way that same sex partners should be. Finally, Keenan invoked feminism, saying that if a woman “wants to marry a man with three other wives, that’s her damn choice.”

What’s scariest though, is Keenan’s view of marriage in general: (hint: it’s a lot like liberals view of the Constitution). “The definition of marriage is plastic,” she wrote. “Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage, marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less “correct” than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults.”

So marriage is a living, changing institution, subject to the fickle whims present culture. It is whatever liberals like Keenan says it is at any given moment.

She ended with a rallying cry, “So let’s fight for marriage equality until it extends to every same-sex couple in the United States—and then let’s keep fighting. We’re not done yet.”

At least Keenan is honest about what she wants. If your objective is the bottom, you may as well own the slippery slope.

Middle School Girls Forced To Ask Classmates For 'Lesbian Kiss' During Anti-Bullying Presentation.

Via BCF

"Imagine 13 and 14-year-old girls being instructed to ask one another for a lesbian kiss in a class exercise. The girls had no choice. The parents were NOT informed. But hey, if it falls under “anti-bullying,” then who are you to question it, right?"

Cat Can't Quit Vacuum Cleaner.

Heh ; )

Via Mashable

Strong Quake Jolts China's Sichuan Provence Killing 160.

#PrayForChina

YA'AN, China (AP) -- Residents awoke Sunday after spending the night outdoors or in their cars in a town near the epicenter of a powerful earthquake that struck the steep hills of China's southwestern Sichuan province, leaving at least 160 people dead and more than 6,700 injured.

The earthquake Saturday morning triggered landslides and disrupted phone and power connections in mountainous Lushan county five years after a devastating quake wreaked widespread damage across the region.

The village of Longmen was hit particularly hard, with authorities saying nearly all the buildings there had been destroyed in a frightening minute-long shaking by the quake.

In nearby Ya'an town, where aftershocks were felt nearly a day after the quake, residents sat in groups outside convenience stores watching the news on television sets. Fourteen-year-old Wang Xing sat with her family on chairs by the roadside in the cool night air, a large blanket on her lap.

25 Craziest Things The U.S. Government Spends Money On

- With trillions of dollars in debt, the U.S. government, like a runaway shopaholic, still manages to find ridiculous things to throw its dollar bills at. Just remember though, that relative to how much is spent annually on defense and social security, even the costliest of these expenses would make barely a dent in the national budget. So, from pancakes to prostitutes, monkey poop to video games, here are the 25 craziest things the U.S. government spends money on. (Click for accompanying article)

India Has One Third Of World's Poorest, Says World Bank.

One in three of the world's poorest people are living in India, the world's second-fastest growing economy, according to a new study by the World Bank.

(Telegraph) - While new figures show that the number of those in extreme poverty around the world - surviving on 82 pence per day or less - has declined significantly, India now has a greater share of the world's poorest than it did thirty years ago. Then it was home to one fifth of the world's poorest people, but today it accounts for one-third - 400 million.

The study, The State of the Poor: Where are the Poor and Where are the Poorest?, found the number of extremely poor people had declined from half the world's population in 1981 to one fifth in 2010, but voiced concern at its increase in Sub-Saharan Africa and continuing high level in India.

World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said while the overall decline was "remarkable progress", the remaining 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty was "a stain on our collective conscience." His colleague, World Bank chief economist Kaushik Basu, who until last year was economic advisor to Indian prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh, said the figures called for the world's wealthier countries to do more.

Full Story.

Huge Blast At Texas Fertilizer Plant Injures Over 100.

(nytimes) WEST, Tex. — A huge explosion tore through a fertilizer plant near West, a town in central Texas on Wednesday night, causing over 100 injuries and an unknown number of deaths, laying waste to swathes of buildings and potentially sending toxic fumes into the air, authorities said.

The explosion, in the quiet town of fewer than 3,000, ripped through the night at around 8 p.m. local time, said Representative Bill Flores, a Republican who represents the district.

It began with a smaller fire at the plant, West Fertilizer, just off Interstate 35, about 20 miles north of Waco, Mr. Flores said, which was attended by local volunteer firefighters. “The fire spread and hit some of these tanks that contain chemicals to treat the fertilizer,” Mr. Flores said, “and there was an explosion which caused wide damage.”

Videos posted online showed a large fire, visible from hundreds of yards away, followed by a fireball that blasted high into the sky and, according to television footage, set fires burning into the night.

“Right now we have a tremendous amount of injuries, probably over 100 injuries at this time,” D.L. Wilson, a state trooper with the Texas Department of Public Safety, told reporters at a press conference early Thursday morning. “We do have confirmed fatalities,” he said, but declined to say how many because a search of the area was being conducted.

Full Story.