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College Students Refuse To Read Award-Winning Novel Because It Violates Their Christian Beliefs

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Some freshmen students at Duke University are protesting the assignment of Fun Home, claiming reading it would violate their Christian beliefs.

Fun Home is an award-winning, New York Times best-selling graphic novel and memoir that was adapted for the theatre and recently won five Tonys, including the coveted Tony Award for Best Musical. The book and the Broadway show both deal with the very personal, challenging, and emotional issues of its author, Alison Bechdel, including growing up, discovering she is a lesbian, and learning her father, who commits suicide, was gay.

The book was assigned to incoming Duke University freshmen as part of their summer reading list, but as Claire Ballentine at The Chronicle, Duke’s student newspaper, reports, several Christian students strongly objected to the book and refused to read it, citing their deeply-held religious beliefs.

“I feel as if I would have to compromise my personal Christian moral beliefs to read it,” Brian Grasso wrote on the Duke University Class of 2019 Facebook page, a closed group. He cited its “graphic visual depictions of sexuality,” as part of his reason. “Duke did not seem to have people like me in mind,” he added. “It was like Duke didn’t know we existed, which surprises me.”

“There is so much pressure on Duke students, and they want so badly to fit in,” Grasso observed. “But at the end of the day, we don’t have to read the book.” 

Grasso was not alone in his protest.

“The nature of ‘Fun Home’ means that content that I might have consented to read in print now violates my conscience due to its pornographic nature,” Jeffrey Wubbenhorst wrote in an email to The Chronicle.

Freshman Elizabeth Snyder-Mounts also objected, writing, “I thought to myself, ‘What kind of school am I going to?’”

Not all the students objected to being exposed to the critically acclaimed book.

“Reading the book will allow you to open your mind to a new perspective and examine a way of life and thinking with which you are unfamiliar,” freshman Marivi Howell-Arza wrote.

Duke, established in 1838, is a nonsectarian, secular, private university in North Carolina that has produced eight Nobel laureates.

 

Image by Marco40134 via Flickr and a CC license

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News

DeSantis Busted by Florida Paper Over ‘Horrific’ Abortion Debate Tale

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August 26, 2023

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On Saturday morning the Miami Herald called out Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for a story he told during Wednesday’s Republican Party debate about an abortion where he got the facts entirely wrong in order to make his anti-choice point.

At issue was a tale about a woman he called “Penny” who survived an abortion.

The Florida governor told a national TV audience, “I know a lady in Florida named Penny. She survived multiple abortion attempts. She was left discarded in a pan. Fortunately, her grandmother saved her and brought her to another hospital.”

According to the Herald, DeSantis got the story wrong even down to the woman’s name.

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As the Herald’s Julie K. Brown wrote, “Critics of the governor flocked to social media to suggest the “Penny” story was made up or wildly embellished. Supporters countered that liberals were triggered by an ugly truth.”

She continued, “Penny is real and her last name is Hopper. But DeSantis failed to note key details from her remarkable story: The person who tried to end Penny’s life in the womb was not a doctor or even an illegal abortion provider — it was her father. And his effort to abort his daughter with a coat hanger took place almost two decades before the Supreme Court’s seismic Roe v. Wade decision, which established a woman’s right to an abortion.

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Brown added that her debunking of the DeSantis’ story “is based on previous recorded statements made by Hopper, newspaper clippings, public records and an interview with a family member who after speaking to a journalist at length asked not to be identified. She confirmed that Hopper’s version of events has been told in family circles for years.”

You can read more here.

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OPINION

‘Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow’ Didn’t Indict Trump, ‘Regular People’ Did: Fox News Host Destroys ‘Two-Tiered’ Justice Claims

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2 days ago

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August 25, 2023

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A Fox News host destroyed conservative claims that Donald Trump‘s criminal indictments show there’s a “two-tiered” system of justice being used against Republicans.

Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal co-host on the conservative cable channel’s popular afternoon show, “The Five,” reminded her right-wing counterparts on Friday that Trump was indicted in four different jurisdictions by “regular people,” while pointing to a new poll that finds majorities of Americans believe he is guilty of the federal crimes he has been charged with and if convicted believe he should be imprisoned.

“Donald Trump was indicted in four jurisdictions around this country, by juries of regular Americans in New York, in D.C., and Atlanta, and in South Florida, where he calls home,” Tarlov said. “This wasn’t Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow sitting there. It was regular people who listened to the evidence that was brought before them.”

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“When you say that people are rallying behind him, his diehard base is, but the average American isn’t,” she continued.

“There’s new polling out today. 62% think that he committed a crime, including 67% of independents. 61% think that he must stand trial before the election. Why? Because you don’t want to put someone in office who’s going to jail, and 59% think that the DOJ is being fair.”

“That shoots straight through the argument that this is a ‘two-tiered’ system of justice,” she continued. “If you don’t like that Joe Biden is fundraising off of it, you know, Donald Trump is doing the same thing, he’s having his moment. Mitch McConnell even – remember he fundraised off of ‘Cocaine Mitch.'”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Singer Mocks GOP Candidates After Song Used in Debate: It’s ‘Definitely’ About Them

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OPINION

‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Singer Mocks GOP Candidates After Song Used in Debate: It’s ‘Definitely’ About Them

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2 days ago

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August 25, 2023

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Country-folk singer-songwriter Oliver Anthony, who wrote the Billboard number one hit song used in the opening of Wednesday night’s first GOP 2024 presidential debate on Fox News is mocking the Republican candidates on stage for embracing it, revealing for the first time the song is “definitely” written about them.

Declaring that “what makes us strong is our diversity,” Anthony says, “it was funny seeing it at the presidential debate, ’cause it’s like, I wrote that song about those people, you know,” he said with a chuckle.

“So for them to have to sit there and listen to that, that cracks me up,” Anthony added, laughing a bit more. “But it was funny kind of seeing the response to it, like that song has nothing to do with Joe Biden, you know, it’s a lot bigger than Joe Biden. That song’s written about the people on that stage and a lot more too, not just them, but definitely them.”

Fox News opened the debate with clips of Americans complaining about inflation and the cost of living, along with a clip of President Joe Biden saying that his economic plan, dubbed Bidenonmics, is working.

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“As we sit here tonight,” Fox News host and debate moderator Martha MacCallum said Wednesday, to cheers and applause from the audience in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, “the number one song on the Billboard chart is called ‘Rich Men North of Richmond,'”

“It is by a singer from FarmVille, Virginia named Oliver Anthony. His lyrics speak of alienation, of deep frustration with the state of government, and of this country. Washington, D.C. is about 100 miles north of Richmond,” MacCallum concluded before playing a short portion of the song.

“Why is this song striking such a nerve in this country right now? What do you think it means?” she asked.

On Thursday, The Washington Post published a short clip of Fox News using the song during the debate, and after, Oliver Anthony, whose actual name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford, talking about himself and his political beliefs.

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“We got to go back to the roots of what made this country great in the first place,” Anthony says, “which was our sense of community and our, I mean, we are the melting pot of the world and that’s what makes us strong is our diversity and we need to learn to harness that, appreciate it, and not use it as a political tool to keep everyone separate from each other.”

“I sit pretty down the center on politics, and always have, it seems like you know, both sides serve the same master and that master is not someone of any good to the people of this country,” he added.

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Watch the videos of Oliver Anthony above or at this link.

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