Friday Miscellany

Here are a few items from the past week.

• The Texas Freedom Network released a report (executive summary here(pdf)) on the appalling state of sex education in Texas schools. Most Texas students receive abstinence only instruction, which we already know isn’t effective. TFN also found that sexuality materials used in Texas schools “regularly contain factual errors and perpetuate lies and distortions about condoms and STDs.” It gets even worse. Check here for more information if you dare.



• FactCheck.org has analyzed some of the GOP’s pet claims about the recently passed economic stimulus package. The results fail to surprise.



• Matt Cooper has been covering the Conservative Political Action Conference (see here, here and here), where one can acquire, among other things, a button that reads, “It’s okay to be Ex Gay.”



• It was bound to happen. Someone has asked, “What would Jesus tweet?” Actually, this is an interesting post about the Church of England encouraging people to use Twitter and Facebook to enhance their Lenten experience. Others find an e-fast to be an appropriate Lenten discipline.



• Joe Barton and John Culberson discovered twitter, and apparently couldn’t help themselves during President Obama’s speech.



• Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who worked as an oceanographer in her prior career, recently spoke with Religion News Service about the role of science in her faith.
  
  

  Jefferts Schori said science informs everything from how she interprets the Bible to her views on homosexuality—two subjects that now embroil her church and the larger Anglican Communion.
  
  “I think it’s pretty clear from scientific studies that homosexuality, particularly male homosexuality, has got a significant component that is determined before birth,” she said. “It is, at least from a theological perspective, part of the created order. …It’s the church’s job to help people live holy lives however they’ve been created, and sexuality is part of our creation.”
  

  
  Check it out.



• Is this a frivolous lawsuit? (I think there might be a proximate cause issue.)

Hope your weekend doesn’t involve being covered in raw sewage.