The Texas story: Yeah, no, BoingBoing's source is Wired, which would normally be okay but Wired's sources are Rutherford, Infowars, and WingNutDaily. Rutherford is highly-partisan and a party to the litigation, but generally no more inaccurate than any press release from one party to a lawsuit. The other two? Outright crap.
The story is bullshit. How much truth there might be under the bullshit? Hard to tell, because Alex Jones and Joe Farah are adding more as fast as they can, and Rutherford will only ever present the situation in the way most favourable to their client, because duh.
Fred "Slacktivist" Clark, allegedly-Baptist-and-yet-often-not-stupid Christian, has a number of things to say about that case. My favourite so far:
The Rutherford Institute — which is like a much more thoughtful and interesting version of the religious right — is making a similar legal argument on behalf of a Texas high school student who objects to the GPS tracking in her school’s student ID badges.
One could certainly argue that this is an intrusive violation of students’ privacy, but the religious right does not believe in privacy. So instead the Rutherford lawyers are arguing that the ID badge violates the student’s “religious liberty,” because she believes she’s being asked to accept the Mark of the Beast spoken of in the book of Revelation.
Note that any sort of objective, knowable reality is irrelevant to this legal argument. It does not matter that the Northside Independent School District is not, in fact, the Beast of John’s Apocalypse. Nor does it matter that this student ID is not, in fact, the Mark of the Beast.
The student’s beliefs are factually wrong — demonstrably so. Her beliefs are based on poor exegesis, scientific ignorance, a haughty disdain for others, and a preference for fearful lies over objective truth. Yet they remain her beliefs. And thus, Rutherford says, she has a legal right to be foolishly, fearfully wrong. Sure, her church seems to be the sort of place that abuses the Bible, cherry-picking distorted proof-texts to reinforce a stunted, fearful incomprehension — but it’s still a her church.
He's even more... pointed... in the original. (http://slacktivist2.livejournal.com/382878.html)
Well, huh. I attended John Marshall High School in NISD. FWIW, the crazy in that part of San Antonio is actually less than the crazy in a lot of other places.
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Date: 2012-11-23 09:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-23 11:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-24 06:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-24 01:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-24 08:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-24 10:51 pm (UTC)The story is bullshit. How much truth there might be under the bullshit? Hard to tell, because Alex Jones and Joe Farah are adding more as fast as they can, and Rutherford will only ever present the situation in the way most favourable to their client, because duh.
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Date: 2012-11-25 08:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-26 06:44 am (UTC)He's even more... pointed... in the original. (http://slacktivist2.livejournal.com/382878.html)
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Date: 2012-11-26 03:45 pm (UTC)