What I witnessed on a Dribbble shot the other day was more than disturbing as two men, David Kovalev and Eric Hoffman, voiced a concern about the nudity and sexuality of the shot being inappropriate for this site: they were torn apart by rabid wolves, insulted and mocked and the bullying continued onto Twitter. I myself got roped in when I expressed my solidarity with them and had to fend off a troll that ended his attack by sending me multiple nude images on Twitter.
This community once was a place to talk and receive feedback from amazing designers and peers unlike anything that came before. While DeviantArt was chock full of immature teenagers and young college students, Dribbble was largely full of professionals.
Now, it has clearly devolved into a cesspool where those that are loudest and rudest get the most amount of credit, and those that dissent are mocked and trolled to the applause of everyone else.
This isn't a community I want to be a part of, a community I want to support. Something has to change or I will likely not be renewing my Pro membership next year.
I posted this on Dribbble the other day after two men and myself were bullied on a thread of a nude shot— that another player posted— and followed onto Twitter for more ridicule for suggesting that this was not the place for these kind of images. Today I received the following from the Dribbble team:
Not only have they removed my shot and reprimanded me for “preaching” and “stirring up controversy”, they have threatened to suspend my account if I break their rules again. Rules that also disallow porn, nudity, or sex in shots on their site. But the original shot that we voiced a concern about remains. Along with the comments featured in my shot.
This is 2015, when people that complain about nudity on a site meant to be work friendly are threatened with suspension and bullied by the community for speaking up. Because #tolerance.
Even though we live in the age of freely accessible information, thanks to you, the Leftist lynch mob, our citizenry is dumber than ever, calling for justice before you know the crime. Demanding a white cop be strung up and killed for daring to be white and on the job, or a hunter to be hunted and killed himself, you never never pause to say “Hey, maybe there’s two sides to this story and we should wait for answers.” No. What matters is merely your hatred, the hashtags and the race to be the dumbest flying turd-nuggets in the wicked brigade of #JusticeWithoutFacts.
Another week, another liberal lynch mob angry about another situation they barely understand, but don't care to know much about other than the race of those involved. Can we get just one media team to say, “Guys, maybe we can wait until we know more before we light our torches”? This is just ugly, guys.
When Lawrence Krauss says that no true scientist starts assumptions of God, he’s committed a fallacy called a No True Scotsman.
A No True Scotsman argument is an ad hominem fallacy, targeting the person making the argument instead of the argument at hand.
It goes as follows:
“Scientists have to be militant atheists to do their job,” which gets the response ”Michael Faraday was a believer in God and used Scripture as a source to discover electromagnetism,” to which the one bad at arguing says, “No true scientist believes in God.”
It’s a way of distracting from the argument at hand and poor form, for sure.
When Lawrence Krauss does this, he ignores the wealth of scientific understanding that has come from Christian men and women that started with the Bible as their authority.
As previously stated, Michael Faraday was the father of electromagnetism.
In a book on Faraday and electricity, Brian Bowers writes that ‘it seems likely that his religious belief in a single Creator encouraged his scientific belief in the “unity of forces”, the idea that magnetism, electricity and the other forces have a common origin.’ Faraday went on to show that the electricity produced was the same regardless of how it was produced—by a magnetic field, by a chemical battery or as static electricity.
The father of Thermodynamics, too, was a devout Christian scientist. James Joule, who is credited with Joule’s Law. Isaac Asimov called his First Law of Thermodynamics, “one of the most important generalizations in the history of science”.
But don’t forget Pascal, Pasteur, and even Newton. Much of early science was pioneered by Christian creationists, but even modern science is seeing major discoveries from creationists, such as the inventor of the MRI, Raymond Vahan Damadian.
To set a pseudo-requirement that scientists mustn’t believe in God is just another attempt to silence faith in today’s world. Because tolerance.
“Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny. Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America.
“I stand with Kim Davis. Unequivocally. I stand with every American that the Obama Administration is trying to force to chose between honoring his or her faith or complying with a lawless court opinion.
“In dissent, Chief Justice Roberts rightly observed that the Court’s marriage opinion has nothing to do with the Constitution. Justice Scalia observed that the Court’s opinion was so contrary to law that state and local officials would choose to defy it.
“For every politician — Democrat and Republican — who is tut-tutting that Davis must resign, they are defending a hypocritical standard. Where is the call for the mayor of San Francisco to resign for creating a sanctuary city — resulting in the murder of American citizens by criminal illegal aliens welcomed by his lawlessness?
“Where is the call for President Obama to resign for ignoring and defying our immigration laws, our welfare reform laws, and even his own Obamacare?
“When the mayor of San Francisco and President Obama resign, then we can talk about Kim Davis.
“Those who are persecuting Kim Davis believe that Christians should not serve in public office. That is the consequence of their position. Or, if Christians do serve in pubic office, they must disregard their religious faith–or be sent to jail.
“Kim Davis should not be in jail. We are a country founded on Judeo-Christian values, founded by those fleeing religious oppression and seeking a land where we could worship God and live according to our faith, without being imprisoned for doing so.
“I call upon every Believer, every Constitutionalist, every lover of liberty to stand with Kim Davis. Stop the persecution now.”
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
Thomas Jefferson
I have a guity pleasure for the writings of Douglas Wilson. The wit and the bite of his words are something to admire. Many Christian writers are too nice, avoiding harsh, direct words even when they are necessary. Douglas doesn’t mince words.
In his latest piece, he addresses the lack of support for Kim Davis, the county clerk that has taken a stand against the new cultural edict of gay marriage.
[T]here is a difference between contempt of court and seeing that the courts have become contemptible.
This woman needs our prayers as much as the Duggars do. As she is brought before the court of the land, she will need the boldness to stand for godliness against a godless rule. This is no easy task. Fact is, she was elected to uphold the law and the rights of the citizens. These rights and these laws were not to be established by men, but by God. “Endowed by our Creator,” to quote our founding documents. But now, activist lawyers have taken it upon themselves to read additional rights into amendments that simply don’t give those rights.
So let us pray for Kim’s boldness, her faith, and her resolve. They can either fire or impeach her, or realize that when a right infringes on the rights of others, it isn’t a right. Forcing Christians to participate in sinful behavior has never been legal, so let’s pray that we can get some balance back for religious freedom.
Now this takes me to my citation of Jefferson above. Some might say that it is a shame that I, a staunch Calvinist, have taken to quoting a Deist on the relationship of righteousness to government. And I say that it is a shame that a 18th century Deist has a better grasp of the relationship of righteousness to government than do two and a half busloads of 21st century Reformed seminary professors. The striking inconsistency might have two possible causes, in other words.
We went back up to Naperville over the weekend, after moving down to St. Louis a couple weeks ago. Of course that meant returning to Harvest Naperville to hear a guest preacher preach one of the most relevant messages I’ve heard in a while on a passage I had somehow skimmed over before.
And as he was saying these things in his defense, Festus said with a loud voice, “Paul, you are out of your mind; your great learning is driving you out of your mind.” But Paul said, “I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking true and rational words.
Anyone that has had the audacity to challenge gay marriage or any other of the hot topic sins of our day has heard this repeatedly: bigot! What does it even mean? Not what you think it does, actually, as discussed many times before. As I said a couple months back, we should be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. These words are used to end debate instead of encourage it. Instead of asking questions and seeking truth, our culture has shut off entire arguments with hateful, derogatory terms like bigot, racist, misogynist, homophobic, and more. Our culture has become slow to hear, quick to speak, and very quick to anger. Step out of line and your ass will be chewed out. This isn’t tolerance, far less cordial conversation.
Some people act as if it was the Duggar’s responsibility to have made this sad episode in their family public knowledge. They are to be praised for not hiding this from the appropriate parties and eventually the police, but they owed it to no one else to publicize the sins of a minor child and the court agrees with that assessment, the judge now ordering that the police report be destroyed. But the cat is already out of the bag. How many of you would broadcast the sins of your children to the whole world? Would you be willing to publicize your own darkest moments? It is miserable indeed that someone was willing to illegally obtain a police investigation involving minor children and publish it for whatever nefarious purpose they had in mind.
Great post from the father-in-law of Jessa Seewald (née Duggar) addressing the recent news about Josh Duggar. The media is swarming around this like flies.
Did Lena Dunham get this kind of outrage when she published a book including information about her sexually molesting her younger sister? No, in fact the media came to her defense.
The overreaction to incidents like this only serves to reinforce sexual shame in our culture. “It makes many adults ashamed of what was very normal sexual play in their childhood,” she says. “And it makes people buy into this idea that children themselves aren’t sexual, which is totally wrong.”
The media claimed that her groping her sister’s genitalia was normal childhood play, but the same publication says this of Josh Duggar:
“This is why I never use softening, minimizing language,” Field writes. “I say assault and rape and abuse. And, if it comes to light that Josh digitally penetrated his victims, I’m going to start saying Joshua Duggar is a rapist.”
So if feminist hero Lena Dunham “digitally penetrates” her sister, it is “normal sexual play,” but if right-wing Christian Josh Duggar does so he is a rapist. Got it. And we are the hypocrites. Christians say that both are wrong. Horribly wrong. In the case of Dunham, she plays it off as normal and shameless. In the case of Duggar, he seeks help from the Church and forgiveness from his victims and the incidents were reported to the authorities.
Yup, they forced one of their own to apologize for stretching out a hand to those they oppose, looking for middle ground and dialogue.
Ian Reisner, a hotelier whose properties have been subject to boycott calls since news of the meeting broke, wrote on Facebook that he made "a terrible mistake" by agreeing to host Cruz, who is adamantly opposed to gay marriage.
MSNBC makes it look like Reisner had a change of heart. But to quote the article from Bloomberg:
"Hundreds of people are contacting us to organize and help," said the organizer via email. "We will be meeting with a number of local gay rights organizations in the next few days to see how we want to collectively approach this unfortunate situation. We are a very powerful community -- as evidenced by what just occurred in Indiana and last year in Arizona. The thought of one dollar spent at their bars and hotels making its way into the campaign coffers of anti-LGBT elected officials is outrageous. If we have to shut the place down to prevent that from happening, we will."
Shut them down. These threats from the Left are becoming the norm for Christian business owners. But to leveled against a gay business owner, from what I can tell, is a new low. With non-stop threats over the weekend, it makes sense that Reisner would have a change of heart. Lose his business to stand with someone that disagrees? No brainer. No. Brainer.
