CAM = Catholic Alternative Medicine?
A long dead woman from the Mohawk Native American tribe who contracted smallpox as a child, was horribly scarred by the disease. She later converted to Catholicism and 330 years after her death cured Jacob “Jake” Finkbonner, 11, of his flesh eating strep. Seriously! And, get this: Kateri Tekakwitha, 355, is about to become a saint for healing. I am happy to hear of his recovery, but I do not get the intervention of a specific Native lady who lived in New York State helping a child related to the Lummi tribe of Washington State. Their tribes never spanned the USA; but if they did, wouldn’t they have been enemies in her time?

Perhaps I am looking at this from the wrong angle. CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) could offer the answer instead of religion. Many discussions have sprouted up in recent years about every glass of water you drank most likely having had at least one molecule of water that passed from the bladder of Oliver Cromwell. Perhaps the solution is homeopathy. Since the urine of Kateri could have naturally been succussed and diluted over time, I think we are overlooking the cause of Jake’s miracle cure.

Courts 2 – Asshat Girl 0
A story that raised my ire last year just got put to rest. Jennifer Keeton was a student at Augusta State University in Georgia. As a graduate student in school counseling, she was upset that the university desired fair and equal treatment for all of the people Jennifer would help in the future. That includes *gasp* homosexual people. She thought her instructors were attacking her religiously based homophobia when Jennifer advocated “conversion therapy” and said all sexual behavior is a “personal choice”.

In Ms. Keeton’s lawsuit, she claimed the school created a remediation plan to keep her on track to graduate. The plan needed her to “attend workshops on serving diverse populations, read articles on counseling gay, lesbian, and bisexual and transgendered people, and write reports to an adviser summarizing what she has learned”. As a part of the religious majority, Jennifer would have none of it. Interesting factoid: To show their support for Jennifer’s position, the Ku Klux Klan came out to protest at her campus. Keeton publicly condemned the show of solidarity afterward.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld a lower court’s ruling against against Ms. Keeton last Friday. In a sad waste of time for the court, the judges noted the university’s requirements for the counseling program mirror the American Counseling Association’s Code of Ethics and are very similar to the rules the judges must follow for impartiality even if the judges do not agree with the laws. A quote from their summary stated “In seeking to evade the curricular requirement that she not impose her moral values on clients,” the court said, “Keeton is looking for preferential, not equal, treatment.”

Please, Ms. Keeton. Open your heart and just finish your schooling at any university other than Liberty University and put that hate behind you. And, if the Ku Klux Klan agrees with you on a deeply held belief, you might want to rethink your position.

Cox and Pegg Team For Learning & Laughs
If you are like me, you love a good comedic zombie movie such as Shaun of the Dead. If you are really after my heart, you love learning from a teacher that knows the subject and has enthusiasm for sharing that knowledge. Simon Pegg fills the first requirement and Brian Cox fills the second very well. Have a chuckle and learn a bit!

Don’t Be a Grinch
Happy Christmas and Merry New Year everyone. Santa isn’t real. But that’s no reason to be a grinch. Buy some presents for the people you love. Enjoy merry making and good food with friends and family. Most of all, tell them you love ’em too.

I hope to see each and every one of you at the Northwest Free-thought Convention in Seattle, Washington next year!

~Wesley

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