Reading Time: 2 minutes In a decision both shocking and utterly predictable, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves has designated April as Confederate Heritage Month. The legacy of the Confederacy is one of white supremacy, chattel slavery, militarism, and rebellion against the United States government. The Confederacy lost decisively on the battlefield against the Union, but descendants of the Confederates spent […]
Mississippi
Posted inNews
Op-ed: My beliefs shall be your beliefs, like it or not
Reading Time: 3 minutes The US Senate has been working on a voting rights bill – that is, the Democrats have been working on it and the Republicans have been trying to kneecap it. Last week Mississippi Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith felt called to bring Daddy God into it. “I can speak for Mississippi,” she says, “on why we […]
Posted inReligion
Hunt for the Red Heifer: Suck-Starting the Apocalypse
Reading Time: 10 minutes Hi and welcome back! Back when I was Pentecostal, most of my denomination obsessed over the Endtimes. Many of us had whole boxes full of diagrams and photocopies of prophecies and analyses. We thought this stuff predicted ‘the day and the hour,’ to borrow the Bible’s phrasing. Recently, I got an intense reminder of one […]
Posted inNews, Parenting & Family
Camp Quest Is Coming to Mississippi!
Reading Time: 2 minutes If you know anything about camps in the region of the country where I live, you know that they’re almost uniformly religious in nature. Even the ones which conceal their religious affiliations tend to recruit from among the devout from whichever tradition the directors inhabit…which is fine, if that’s what you’re looking for. But what […]
Posted inEthics and Morality, Politics, Sex & Gender
Bryan Adams Follows Springsteen in Cancelling Show over Anti-Gay Laws
Reading Time: < 1 minute Bryan Adams has followed suit from the example Bruce Springsteen and some large corporations in pulling out of a show in Mississippi. As the BBC states: Bryan Adams has cancelled a concert in Mississippi over the US state’s new controversial religious liberty law. The law, which allows some private businesses and religious groups to refuse […]
Posted inSatire
Mississippi Anti-Gay Tourism Video
Reading Time: < 1 minute Mississippi Anti-Gay Tourism Video is from the comedic cabal over at Funny or Die. It’s only a minute long and it packs a big satirical punch. Check it out. I was in Louisiana years ago visiting my friend who was going to Tulane University. Not really knowing what to expect I took a tour of a plantation. […]
Posted inGeneral, News, Politics, The Secular
Condescension Isn’t Kindness
Reading Time: 5 minutes Recently, an article ran about the award I received from the Freedom From Religion Foundation in the Clarion Ledger and was later reprinted by the Hattiesburg American. I received the first ever Yip Harburg Youth Activist award for an article I wrote about cruel responses to the complaint the City of Collins received for their Christmas decorations. The […]
Posted inEducation, General, News, Politics
When State Representatives Try to Kill Their Own Educational System
Reading Time: 6 minutes This fall after teaching high school and middle school for 15 years, I finally turned in my lanyard and took a break from teaching. I can’t tell you for certain that I’ll never go back because who knows what the future holds? But I can tell you what made me decide to leave the classroom. […]
Posted inCulture, General, Politics, Religion
My School System Really Doesn’t Get What the Establishment Clause Means
Reading Time: 6 minutes A few weeks ago I finally wrote out a little bit of the story of how and when I decided to start writing about my departure from the Christian faith, along with the consequences I encountered for doing so. I started blogging two weeks after that saga culminated in the loss of a teaching job, […]
Posted inCulture, General, Religion
Not All Mississippians Are This Backwards, But Some Are (Video)
Reading Time: 2 minutes The struggle is real, y’all. First of all, let me say up front that #NotAllMississippians talk the way this guy talks. Not all residents of The Hospitality State hate all the same things this guy clearly hates. Many of us are here for different reasons and hope to see some kind of progress filtering down […]