Why Do You Use Those Hash Tags With Your Tweets?

Why Do You Use Those Hash Tags With Your Tweets?

I actually had someone Tweet this question at me.

I posted a link to some news story about a man who was arrested for raping a kid or something of that nature. The man in the story I tweeted, if I recall right, was married and a father.

Someone asked me on social media,

‘What do your tags, which include “FamilyValues, Complementarianism, Christianity, Fatherhood, etc, have to do with this news story you tweeted?”

For all I know, the guy in the story I tweeted was NOT a Christian.

It’s quite possible the guy in the story was an atheist, for instance. (I usually read or at least skim the links I tweet, but sometimes, I just go by the headline.)

Here’s why I include certain tags:

Sexism, Protecting Women, Family Values, and Christians Placing Biological Family Above Everyone Else

Sexism, Protecting Women, Family Values, and Christians Placing Biological Family Above Everyone Else

(Link):  The Problem with Protecting our Wives and Daughters

Excerpts:

by K. Du Mez

….I’m reminded here of the poignant words of Madeline Southard, one of the leading proponents of women’s rights in the Methodist church in the twentieth century. In her 1927 book, The Attitude of Jesus toward Woman, Southard raised precisely this question.

For centuries, Southard noted, women had been considered “the creature of her sex-relationships and of the resultant blood relationships.” As such, a woman’s status had been determined by her being “the wife, mother, daughter, concubine or mistress of some man,” but not as “a person in herself.”

Why “Family Values” Defined Conservative Christianity (and Why “Religious Liberty” has Replaced It) – by E C Miller

Why “Family Values” Defined Conservative Christianity (and Why “Religious Liberty” has Replaced It) – by E C Miller

I am right wing, somewhat Christian, and believe that many Christians and secular conservatives have made the nuclear family and marriage into idols, which is wrong.

I am not opposed out-right to the traditional family, marriage, or to motherhood, and so forth, in and of themselves, but I am in disagreement at how so many right wingers and Christians elevate all those things to the point that they end up marginalizing anyone who does not fit the mould of “married with children.”

Anyone who is infertile, child free, divorced, never married, widowed, and what have you, is excluded or treated shabbily by the majority of “family values” obsessed right wingers and Christians, which again, in my view, is terribly wrong and unfair.

Here is an article explaining how and why the religious right elevated “the family” in their rhetoric:

(Link): Why “Family Values” Defined Conservative Christianity (and Why Religious Liberty has Replaced It) by E C Miller

Excerpts:

• From about 1970 until about 2000, American politics was largely driven by concern about the nuclear family. As established social hierarchies came under fire from the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, second-wave feminism, and others, conservative advocacy groups and their political allies demanded a return to the idealized family of the past. “Family values” became the rallying cry of a countermovement bent on holding the traditional line.
• Seth Dowland is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Pacific Lutheran University. His book, Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right, charts the influence of Christian “family values” advocacy across three decades and a variety of issues.
• RD’s Eric C. Miller spoke with Dowland about the project, the politics, and the significance of family in the United States.
• You introduce “family values” as the key term of the Christian Right in the late twentieth-century United States. Why was this term so influential for this group in this place and time? 
• Many of the political reforms enacted from the 1930s through the 1960s—particularly the expansion of the welfare state and the passage of civil rights legislation—attempted to expand equal rights to all people.
• Political liberals celebrated these developments, while conservatives looked around the nation at the beginning of the 1970s and saw economic stagnation, riots, sexual revolution, a decline in patriotism, and an increase in crime and drug use. Ministers and political conservatives argued that America was in decline. They believed that decline happened because of the demise of the “traditional family.”

Raped, tortured and forced to live in a wardrobe by her Family for FIVE YEARS

Raped, tortured and forced to live in a wardrobe by her Family for FIVE YEARS

Blogger John Hugh Morgan would argue that this woman in this story is “married” to her family member, because her family member had sex with her (raped her) when she was three years old.

Yes he would, say this ((Link): my rebuttal to his post).

On his blog, see (Link): this post or (Link): this one (where he mentions people taking each other for a test drive, which I already discussed on my blog (Link): here – seriously, since this dude claims that me or my blog is not trustworthy, he needs to stop cribbing material from it, or at least give credit if or when he uses ideas from here).

Many conservative Christians like to go on and on about how “family is THE building block of society,” which I say is a load of bunk.

The Bible doesn’t say anything about salvation coming by being in a nuclear family. You need Jesus for salvation. The Bible also does not talk about saving a culture by supporting the nuclear family. I have other posts on this blog that discuss this topic in depth, so I won’t get into it now.

This woman was abused in childhood by her family and only found freedom and peace when she LEFT her family:

(Link):  Raped, tortured and forced to live in a wardrobe for FIVE YEARS: Horrifying ordeal of the starving girl rescued from monster family… and how she’s rebuilt her life at 21

• Lauren Kavanaugh lived in a 4ft by 9ft closet from three to eight years old
• She was only brought out by her mother and stepfather to be tortured
• She was rescued aged eight after a neighbour contacted the police
• Lauren, now 21, is studying psychology wants to qualify as a counsellor
• By CAROLINE MCGUIRE FOR MAILONLINE

• A woman whose mother and stepfather tortured her, forced her to live in a wardrobe for five years and allegedly raped her nightly has spoken of her joy at finally being able to move on with her life.

  Lauren Kavanaugh, now 21 and living in Athens, Texas, lived in a 4ft by 9ft closet from the ages of three until eight, held there by her mother Barbara Atkinson and stepfather Kenny Atkinson.

  The evil couple called Lauren their ‘little secret’ – only bringing her out to torture and allegedly her – but were caught when they showed her off to a horrified neighbour who alerted police.

  When Lauren was pulled from the tiny cupboard at her mother’s home in Dallas, Texas, in 2001, she was eight but weighed 25.6 pounds (1st 8lbs), the same as the average two-year-old and was potbellied with malnutrition.

  She was rushed to surgery where she was fitted with a colostomy bag, but her organs were shutting down.

  During her stay in hospital, doctors had to use a feeding method devised for Holocaust victims because her body was so starved.

• Investigators said she also suffered years of sexual abuse – leaving her tiny body so badly damaged that she needed a series of reconstructive surgeries – but because it would be too traumatic for the then-eight-year-old to testify, Barbara and Kenny Atkinson were never convicted of rape.