Day: May 7, 2005

The photo at right shows Cynthia Ore, the alleged girlfriend of Rep. Don Sherwood of Pennsylvania. Wonkette has a great quote from Ms. Ore:

“Every day he told me I’m his lady, he loved me. He told me he had deep feelings for me…So my girlfriends know. Actually they think he’s hot, which he is of course.”

The affair came to light after Ore called 911 to complain that Sherwood had choked her during a back rub. She alleges that she has been sleeping with Sherwood, who is married, since 1999. In 2004, Sherwood voted for the “Marriage Protection Act.”

PR’s first story is here.

After threatening to protest at a Durham, NC, high school performance of the “Laramie Project,” a play about the martyrdom of Matthew Shepherd at the hands of speedfreak homophobes, Rev. Fred Phelps failed to show up. His supporters were there, above, of course – as were counter-protestors, including Pam Spaulding, editor of Pam’s House Blend.

Independent, UK:

It has been only six years since Kansas covered itself in ridicule by giving schoolteachers the green light to teach the Genesis creation story as a serious scientific alternative to Darwin. That decision was hastily reversed, and the Christian fundamentalist majority on the Board of Education overturned, following a hue and cry from scientists and educators from around the world.

Now, though, the Christian conservatives are back in the ascendant – as indeed they are in every area of Kansas politics, and in much of the United States. The seemingly pleasant, down-to-earth sensibility of the American Midwest has been upended by a new radicalism, one which has fundamentalist protesters wielding “God Hates Fags” placards in the streets of Topeka and Christian choirs singing in the rotunda of the state capitol. As one of the vanguards of this new radicalism, the board of education has every intention of defying the conclusions of its own standards committee by endorsing Intelligent Design and changing the state standards accordingly.

This week’s hearings were the one concession that Dr Abrams, a country veterinarian turned right-wing Christian pointman, was prepared to give to mainstream opinion. “We’ll put our experts on the stand”, he suggested a few weeks ago, “and the pro-evolution scientists can have an equal amount of time to make their argument”.

As it turned out, however, no mainstream scientist wanted anything to do with a public spectacle many of them variously denounced as a kangaroo court, a show trial, a dog-and-pony show and a farce reminiscent of the infamous Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee in 1925. “We concluded it’s not worth debating creationists because you can’t win,” said Liz Craig of the Kansas Citizens for Science. “so we organised a boycott instead.”