Thursday Open Thread [6.20.13]

Exodus International, the Christian ministry known for its “pray away the gay” therapy for homosexuals, issued an apology “for years of undue judgment by the organization and the Christian Church as a whole” and is closing down after 37 years.

Said President Alan Chambers: “Exodus is an institution in the conservative Christian world, but we’ve ceased to be a living, breathing organism. For quite some time we’ve been imprisoned in a worldview that’s neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical.”

I think that is pretty amazing. It is gratifying that some Christians are finally behaving like Christians.

North Carolina is now under the control of a Republican legislature and a Republican Governor for the first time in several decades, and they are having a field day. For example, the legislature passed a repeal of the “the Racial Justice Act,” and the Republican Governor Pat McCrory has signed it into law. What does the Racial Justice Act do? Well, it allowed death row inmates to petition the courts for a reduced sentence if they could prove racial bias affected their trial or punishment.

“The Racial Justice Act, the only law of its kind in the United States, had led to four inmates getting their sentences changed to life in prison without parole after taking effect in 2009. Supporters said the historic measure addressed the state’s long record of racial injustice in its capital punishment system[.]”

So I guess that means North Carolina Republcans are in favor of racial discrimination being a factor in deternmining punishment for crimes. But we already knew that to be true.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)’s Cuban father just admitted to NPR that he bribed government officials to get admitted with an exit permit on his passport. Which means that Cruz’s father is an illegal immigrant and Cruz is just an anchor baby as the right so lovingly calls them. Both must be deported at once, according to their own wonderful ideology.