#National Morality

[demaparbat-hp]

Existential Nihilism Squad™

[alohapromisesforever]

First Principles: Reason and Experience Both Forbid Us To Expect That National Morality Can Prevail In Exclusion of Religious Principle

“Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” – George Washington, in his Farewell Address

[sokkas-therapist]

Breaking my silence: I think Zuko’s “I’m angry at myself” explosion in The Beach episode was queer coded

*runs away before I can be booed off the stage*

[unlimitedbutchworks]

like do you remember a few years back how popular lesbian blogs would come out as bi after a while and then immediately be subject to a wave of hate asks about how they’re personally ruining and soiling the lesbian identity and drive them to delete/remake? actually I’m speaking in past tense but people literally still do this

[odinsblog]

One of the most durable myths in recent history is that the religious right, the coalition of conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists, emerged as a political movement in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion. The tale goes something like this: Evangelicals, who had been politically quiescent for decades, were so morally outraged by Roe that they resolved to organize in order to overturn it.

This myth of origins is oft repeated by the movement’s leaders. In his 2005 book, Jerry Falwell, the firebrand fundamentalist preacher, recounts his distress upon reading about the ruling in the Jan. 23, 1973, edition of the Lynchburg News: “I sat there staring at the Roe v. Wade story,” Falwell writes, “growing more and more fearful of the consequences of the Supreme Court’s act and wondering why so few voices had been raised against it.” Evangelicals, he decided, needed to organize.

Some of these anti- Roe crusaders even went so far as to call themselves “new abolitionists,” invoking their antebellum predecessors who had fought to eradicate slavery.

But the abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism.

Today, evangelicals make up the backbone of the pro-life movement, but it hasn’t always been so. Both before and for several years after Roe, evangelicals were overwhelmingly indifferent to the subject, which they considered a “Catholic issue.” In 1968, for instance, a symposium sponsored by the Christian Medical Society and Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, refused to characterize abortion as sinful, citing “individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility” as justifications for ending a pregnancy. In 1971, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, passed a resolution encouraging “Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” The convention, hardly a redoubt of liberal values, reaffirmed that position in 1974, one year after Roe, and again in 1976.

When the Roe decision was handed down, W. A. Criswell, the Southern Baptist Convention’s former president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas—also one of the most famous fundamentalists of the 20th century—was pleased: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” he said, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”

Although a few evangelical voices, including Christianity Today magazine, mildly criticized the ruling, the overwhelming response was silence, even approval. Baptists, in particular, applauded the decision as an appropriate articulation of the division between church and state, between personal morality and state regulation of individual behavior. “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision,” wrote W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press.

So what then were the real origins of the religious right? It turns out that the movement can trace its political roots back to a court ruling, but not Roe v. Wade.

In May 1969, a group of African-American parents in Holmes County, Mississippi, sued the Treasury Department to prevent three new whites-only K-12 private academies from securing full tax-exempt status, arguing that their discriminatory policies prevented them from being considered “charitable” institutions. The schools had been founded in the mid-1960s in response to the desegregation of public schools set in motion by the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. In 1969, the first year of desegregation, the number of white students enrolled in public schools in Holmes County dropped from 771 to 28; the following year, that number fell to zero.

In Green v. Kennedy (David Kennedy was secretary of the treasury at the time), decided in January 1970, the plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction, which denied the “segregation academies” tax-exempt status until further review. In the meantime, the government was solidifying its position on such schools. Later that year, President Richard Nixon ordered the Internal Revenue Service to enact a new policy denying tax exemptions to all segregated schools in the United States. Under the provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbade racial segregation and discrimination, discriminatory schools were not—by definition—“charitable” educational organizations, and therefore they had no claims to tax-exempt status; similarly, donations to such organizations would no longer qualify as tax-deductible contributions.

On June 30, 1971, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued its ruling in the case, now Green v. Connally (John Connally had replaced David Kennedy as secretary of the Treasury). The decision upheld the new IRS policy: “Under the Internal Revenue Code, properly construed, racially discriminatory private schools are not entitled to the Federal tax exemption provided for charitable, educational institutions, and persons making gifts to such schools are not entitled to the deductions provided in case of gifts to charitable, educational institutions.”

Paul Weyrich, the late religious conservative political activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, saw his opening.

In the decades following World War II, evangelicals, especially white evangelicals in the North, had drifted toward the Republican Party—inclined in that direction by general Cold War anxieties, vestigial suspicions of Catholicism and well-known evangelist Billy Graham’s very public friendship with Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Despite these predilections, though, evangelicals had largely stayed out of the political arena, at least in any organized way. If he could change that, Weyrich reasoned, their large numbers would constitute a formidable voting bloc—one that he could easily marshal behind conservative causes.

“The new political philosophy must be defined by us [conservatives] in moral terms, packaged in non-religious language, and propagated throughout the country by our new coalition,” Weyrich wrote in the mid-1970s. “When political power is achieved, the moral majority will have the opportunity to re-create this great nation.” Weyrich believed that the political possibilities of such a coalition were unlimited. “The leadership, moral philosophy, and workable vehicle are at hand just waiting to be blended and activated,” he wrote. “If the moral majority acts, results could well exceed our wildest dreams.”

But this hypothetical “moral majority” needed a catalyst—a standard around which to rally. For nearly two decades, Weyrich, by his own account, had been trying out different issues, hoping one might pique evangelical interest: pornography, prayer in schools, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, even abortion. “I was trying to get these people interested in those issues and I utterly failed,” Weyrich recalled at a conference in 1990.

The Green v. Connally ruling provided a necessary first step: It captured the attention of evangelical leaders , especially as the IRS began sending questionnaires to church-related “segregation academies,” including Falwell’s own Lynchburg Christian School, inquiring about their racial policies. Falwell was furious. “In some states,” he famously complained, “It’s easier to open a massage parlor than a Christian school.”

One such school, Bob Jones University—a fundamentalist college in Greenville, South Carolina—was especially obdurate. The IRS had sent its first letter to Bob Jones University in November 1970 to ascertain whether or not it discriminated on the basis of race. The school responded defiantly: It did not admit African Americans.

Although Bob Jones Jr., the school’s founder, argued that racial segregation was mandated by the Bible, Falwell and Weyrich quickly sought to shift the grounds of the debate, framing their opposition in terms of religious freedom rather than in defense of racial segregation. For decades, evangelical leaders had boasted that because their educational institutions accepted no federal money (except for, of course, not having to pay taxes) the government could not tell them how to run their shops—whom to hire or not, whom to admit or reject.

The Civil Rights Act, however, changed that calculus.

(continue reading)

[luxurychristmaspudding]

beg | frankie morales x f!reader

summary: frankie's tied up, strung out. it's just a matter of how long he lasts.

pairing: frankie morales x f!reader

ratings/warnings: 18+, MDNI. established relationship. sub!frankie. soft dom(ish)!reader. bondage. edging. mention of using a strap. oral, f&m receiving. unprotected p in v. keeping our boy pussy drunk on national catfish day yk.

wc: 1.7k

an: *sigh* look. i had some thoughts. the itch needed to be scratched. this is a tiny thing and i fear it's no good, but here we are.

In all you've done over the past few months, you don't think you've ever seen Frankie so strung out beneath you. You suppose, tonight, he's got good reason.

Because this must be torture. His wrists cuffed to the bed frame above him, tan arms taught in their restraints. His ankles tied, too - legs spread across the bed - body rendered completely immobile. He's barely been able to make a sound above a whimper, a whisper, a moan. Barely allowed to, as his cock weeps against his stomach, pearly beads of precum smearing against his skin, pooling just below his navel.

Sweat is teasing his curls into tighter ringlets, glistening in the hollow of his throat. The tendons in his neck pulled tight as he cranes his head up to watch you, lipstick marks staining the skin all the way up to his forehead. You'd swiped your lips there as you rode him earlier, chest pressed to chest, able only to moan yourself as you listened to the obscene sound of your soaked cunt pulling him in, pushing him out. Hardly able to perform the role you'd established after so much teasing, focused solely on the thick stretch of him, the fullness of his cock, the way his tip ached against your cervix. It had felt so good, having him so close, so submissive. So willing to be used, so trusting, so eager to feel you come around him.

And he'd looked gorgeous. Fighting to keep his eyes open, jaw slack, throat struggling around a swallow, around the plea of your name. He'd grappled with his self-control as you fucked yourself through every crest, as your pussy fluttered at his begging.

He'd wanted you to make it difficult for him, wanted you to push him tonight. So when you saw that pleading, wide-eyed panic on his face, you'd dragged yourself off of him. Off of his gorgeous, swollen cock, leaving him to pulse and twitch, leaning back on your calves to trail your fingers through the mess between your thighs.

He watches as you shudder at the touch, closing your eyes before meeting his, dark and burning. Lipstick up his chest, down to his bitten, nibbled-pink belly.

'You want a taste, baby boy?'

'Sí, mi cielo.'

He barely breathes as you lean forwards, slotting two fingers into his wet, waiting mouth. He fucking moans at the taste of you, swirling his tongue into any crevice of skin he can find, swiping it beneath your nails. You coo approvingly as you hook your thumb beneath his jaw, pressing the digits down on his tongue just to watch his eyelids fly open. He gags and drools a little, and you pout at him.

'Look so pretty with your mouth full, Frankie.'

He hums around your fingers, pupils blown, eyes glazed.

'Should keep it full more often, huh? Keep my pussy in your mouth all the time.'

He whines at that, body surging in a desperate attempt to move. You giggle, and he whimpers. You lick your lips.

'Or maybe... maybe we could dig out the strap, huh? Have you on your knees, choking on my cock?'

Your fingers fall from his lips with a soft pop as his head hits the pillow beneath him. You watch, smiling, as he hisses a fuck, tries to claw deep breaths into his lungs. As he squeezes his eyes shut, swallows harshly. Once. Twice.

You sit back again, one hand reaching between his legs to pull at his cock, soaked with your slick and come, running your thumb through the creamy ring you left at the base. He grits his teeth, jaw clenched so tight you wonder whether the bone could shatter.

He's close, so close. You want to know how far he'll let you take him before he careens off the edge. 

You squeeze a little harder at his tip, and he keens.

'Please, baby. Please -'

'Please what, Francisco?'

'I don't - I don't wanna come yet -'

'You want me to stop?' You ask, still fisting his cock, painfully slow. You can feel the kick of his heartbeat in it, knowing yourself you're playing with fire.

'Mhm, yes -'

You release him, letting his length slap back against his belly. He gasps and pants as you shush him, crawling up his body, retracing the path of your stained lips before you capture his in a heated kiss. You lick into his mouth, and he lets you. So pliant, so good, so easy. You grip his jaw to keep his mouth open, and pull back to look him in the eye.

'If you don't want to come, baby boy, is there something else I can give you?'

His tongue works in his open mouth, his words garbled. You spit slowly into the darkness there, and lean down to suck on his lip.

'Can't hear you, Francisco. Speak up for me, baby.'

He moans, tries again, louder. You get the gist of it, but it's so fun to play with him like this. You shake your head, grinning.

'Mm, you're not asking properly, are you, niñito? Good boys only get things when they ask properly.' He stares back at you, eyebrows furrowed, pleading.

'Maybe I'll just have to leave you here, all tied up -'

He shakes his head so firmly you lose your grip, and you can't fight the way your smile grows.

'No,' he gasps, 'Please, hermosa. Sit on my face, I want you to sit on my face -'

'Oh, baby. Then you should have said so.'

You grin at him, wicked, as you peel yourself from his sweaty chest, taking a moment to decide how this should go. You tilt your head before swinging your legs over his torso so your back is facing him, moving up the bed to hover your cunt above his mouth. You place your hands firmly on his hips.

You can hear, rather than see, how he struggles to stretch his mouth to you, his little whimpers and whines as you wiggle your ass slightly.

'Por favor, cielo, please, I need -'

You cut him off with another giggle, watching his thighs and cock twitch before you.

'I know what you need, Francisco. But I need you to beg.'

He's louder this time. Needy.

'Please, baby, please. Need you in my mouth. Need to taste you, wanna feel you, need to make you come, hermosa. Wanna smell like you, wanna be yours, need you, need you on m-'

You drop your hips, clit catching on his bottom lip, and his response is immediate. His groan is muffled by your cunt, but his tongue is instantly fixed at a point, lapping at the slick you've been steadily leaking, tracing a path up to your pearl. And then he's spiralling in tight circles, sucking slightly on the bundle of nerves before moving his lips and tongue as one. Getting you messy, just the way you like it - the way he likes it. You lean further forward, belly to belly now, biting your fist until it bruises against the moans clawing up your throat. He's good, he's so good. You can feel slick dripping from your hole to your clit at this angle, drooling from your cunt to Frankie's eager, hungry mouth. Smeared over his skin, his lips, his nose, soaking his beard.

This time, when the moan comes, you release it. Long and loud, broken towards the end. Let your hot breath pour over the skin just above Frankie's neglected dick, and you watch the way he flinches at the sensation.

Perfect.

Regaining your composure, you reach out your tooth-marked hand, tracing your fingers along the curls at his base. He shivers at your touch, but his tongue never pauses. He works you so precisely, so eagerly, that you can feel the burn of your orgasm approaching, can tell by how wet Frankie's mouth is on you that he also knows, tasting the slick you're pulsing out.

You need to work fast.

You take the tip of your finger, trailing up through the hair, up the ridged lines of his cock. The swollen veins, the soft skin, the stickiness of you and the glide of the precum he's covered in. You slide it around the tip, pressing it into the weeping slit before rubbing the digit along the sensitive underside, and this time, Frankie stutters. His hips jolt, his tongue pauses. And then he waits. Waits for the scolding, the punishment. But you say nothing. Just keep touching him, moaning, tracing the same path. Up, around, down, until you lean closer, breathing his heady musk in, before pressing soft, wet kisses to his base, up, up, shifting until you can fit his tip in your mouth.

He must know how you've set him up. He can't pull you off him, can't shift his hips away. Can't tell you to stop with his mouth stuffed full of your cunt. Can't communicate with his eyes when you've got your back to him.

Can't beg you not to make him come. Not without your permission.

It makes some sadistic little coil of pleasure bloom through your stomach. His panting breaths as he continues to eat you, his tense thighs, his curled toes. You relax your throat just enough to take him all the way into your mouth, and swallow.

It's all he needs. You shift your hips as he starts to come, a rattling, hoarse No- ripping from him. He fills your mouth quickly - silky, salty - and you let it dribble down his pulsing length, your clit twitching in an effort to join him. When the last spurts have hit your tongue, when he’s whimpering and heaving, you swallow. You make a show of arching your back, of rising slowly. Of detaching yourself from him, of your disapproval.

When you look at him, he's wrecked. Spent, barely on earth. But his eyes shine with tears, with embarrassment.

'Lo siento, cielo.' He croaks, but you shake your head.

'Not good enough, Francisco,' you murmur, 'You know you can do better than that, don’t you?'

He nods, chin quivering.

'I know, too, baby. And you were doing so well.'

'I’m sorry.' He says again, barely above a whisper.

You tut at him, moving to press a tender kiss to his forehead.

'It's okay, sweetheart. This time. This time, you'll wait for me.'

[atypical-dysphoria-culture-is]

Atypical Dysphoria Emoji Codes

[PT: Atypical Dysphoria Emoji Codes]

Note! I plan to update this over time but for now these are the basic ones! If you have any I don’t have listed, please inform me! For more infomation check this out!

Term Codes

Dissomei : 🧠🚫🫀

Desirdae : 💫☁️ or 🌟🫙

Intusui : 👤💠

Atypical Dysphoria Codes

Atypical Dysphoria : 🧠🌀

Coping Atypical Dysphoria : 🧠🌀💚

Xenic Dysphoria : 🧠⭐️

BIID / Disability Dysphoria : 🧠🦽

Neurodiverse Dysphoria : 🧠🎭

Species Dysphoria : 🧠🐾

Age Dysphoria : 🧠🍼 or 🧠🥤or 🧠🍾

Time/Era Dysphoria : 🧠🕰️

Race Dysphoria : 🧠🖐️

Nationality Dysphoria : 🧠🏳️

Addiction Dysphoria : 🧠💊

Moral Dysphoria : 🧠⚖️

@atypical-dysphoria , @desirdae-archive , @dissodic-archive , @intusui

[july-19th-club]

house md wildest show on earth. a main character outright assassinates a known dictator, a moment that would be the very beginning or the mid-series crisis in any other show - an act which creates a power vacuum in a foreign nation already filled with child soldiers and genocide, and it's literally only brought up again throughout the season because that guy's wife divorces him over it. and occasionally to explore his relationship with who he is as a person and a catholic after having deliberately taken a life for what he calculates as the greater good, but mostly it's about his divorce

[covetyou]

I don't know how any of you plan on celebrating National Catfish Day tomorrow:

but I intend on spending the whole day giving this fictional man love ON THE HOUR EVERY HOUR, with a little surprise from me at 8pm BST. see you at midnight bbs 💛

want to catch up with the goings on at the circus so far? read here.

[aaandbackstabbed]

Scrooge: yesterday, I heard Dewey say “are you sure this is a good idea?” And Louie respond “trust me.”

Scrooge: never have I moved so quickly from one room to another

[orcelito]

ok forreal. in trigun 98, vash singing Rem's song alone while looking at the stars & then Meryl joining in as she goes to sit with him... means So Much to me...

they are Everything...

[blorboazula]

Azutara makes me feral because of the sheer amount of (unexplored) toxic yuri potential it has.

[fiepige]

feel like there is a connection (wishful thinking) between “we don’t pick the ballroom we just dance” and “i’ll do it but not because you told me to” lol

Ooohh yeah I see it! Thank you so much for the suggestion anon! <3

Without further ado, have some more Noirpunk GIFs!

Noir and Hobie both being little shits (affectionate <3) when being told what to do!

BONUS:

I couldn't decide if I wanted to make 2 long GIFs where the dialogue is connected, or 4 shorter ones where it's split up, so I did both lol

(Once again thank you for the suggestion anon! This was such a good idea! We need as many noirpunk GIFs as we can get lol!)

If you, or anyone else, have more suggestions for noirpunk GIFs (or spiderverse GIFs in general) my inbox is always open! <3

[intheorangebedroom]

Instagram x your fav character 📸✨

Thank you so much for the tag, @secretelephanttattoo 🧡 I'm in love your Marcus grid 😍 And thank you for this brilliant and wonderful idea, @punkshort, it's such a fun thing to make! Here's the template if anyone wants to play!

This is for Pleased to meet you Frankie. I don't think he gives a flying rat's ass about socials. Benny insisted he get an Insta, so he did, but he also did the bare minimum. Two pictures in this grid are actually mine (unfortunately, the bottom middle one isn't one of them) and I snuck in one of myself that Kelli snapped two weeks ago because sue me 😁

Please, visit the NIWRC website ptmy Frankie put up in his bio and support if you can, especially today 🧡

NP tags: @frannyzooey @write-down-your-dreams @fuckyeahdindjarin @whatsnewalycat @just-here-for-the-moment

@angiewatson @nicolethered @pedrit0-pascalit0 @jessthebaker @5oh5

Oh and, to anyone who sees this, please tag me in yours, I want to see them, I love these grids so much 🧡

[myanxiouspreoccupiedlife]

Between Humanism and White Christian Nationalism: How Oppression Shaped My Struggles with Autonomy and Attachment

Based on my (humanist) belief in these three things, my (white Christian nationalist) parents believe I:

was ‘tricked’ (according to my mom), or

am ‘ruining this country’ (according to my dad, who had just accused me of voting in favor of a topic that I was completely uninformed about and thus had no opinion on).

Their comments and dismissal of my ability to reason, as well as my patriotism and moral integrity, underscore the oppressive and controlling mindset inherent in White Christian Nationalism. They also mirror the dynamics that contributed to the development of my anxious preoccupied attachment style.

[fruitybowl]

🚨🚨🚨🚨IMPORTANT NEW INFORMATION ABOUT KOSA🚨🚨🚨🚨

Pls pls share this and tell as many people has you can. The more people that are openly opposed to this bill the better.

Ignore the tags I’m just trying to spread this as far as I can