Hi, I’m blueneck, and This is My South.
I’ve had it today. I’ve thought long and hard about starting this series of diaries. Should I point out the good news about the South, or rat out the sorry state of affairs that continues….? Maybe I’ll do some of both, but this one is about the sad, sad ignorance and intolerance that regularly continues to rear its ugly head.
First off, check out this story in the Clarion-Ledger, the Jackson, Mississippi newspaper (Gannett), about the “Christian” adoption service that receives funds through the sale of Mississippi car tags with the motto “Choose Life” printed on them.
A local Christian adoption agency that receives funds from the sale of Mississippi’s Choose Life specialty car tags will not consider Catholics as adoptive parents.
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“It has been our understanding that Catholicism does not agree with our Statement of Faith,” wrote Bethany Christian Services director Karen Stewart in a July 8 letter to Sandy and Robert Stedman, a Catholic couple in Jackson seeking to adopt. “Our practice to not accept applications from Catholics was an effort to be good stewards of an adoptive applicant’s time, money and emotional energy.”
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Sandy Stedman, a 33-year-old neonatal nurse who had been trying to get pregnant for three years, said Stewart wrote her the letter after she called Bethany to inquire about the agency’s policy toward Catholics.
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In a written response to The Clarion-Ledger’s questions about the agency’s policy toward prospective Catholic parents, Stewart did not answer the questions directly but wrote, “Bethany seeks to place children with (sic) who are emotionally, financially, socially and physically stable and who agree with the agency’s Statement of Faith.”The Stedmans said they showed Bethany’s statement of faith to their priest, who told them it did not conflict with Catholic teaching.
The statement is available at Bethany’s Web site, www.bethany.org.
“I have a feeling that the board has a little bit of that Deep South mentality about Catholics,” Robert Stedman said.
Duh, “Deep South mentality”, indeed.
Bethany “Christian” Services – Statement of Faith [scare quotes are mine, and this link is to the Clarion-Ledger web site, not bethany.org, as I will not dignify their website by encouraging hits.]
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Next up, an article about the decline of the KKK in Mississippi. It’s hard for me to get excited about the “decline” when we still have six active chapters…and lest we forget, the KKK has morphed itself into the CCC, which is also active here. None other than Mississippi Senator Trent (small-Tent) Lott and Governor Haley Barbour (aka Hollow Bubba) have visited with the CCC and received their endorsement.
Mississippi has six Klan chapters, according to the figures kept by [the Montgomery, Ala.-based Southern Poverty Law Center]… Tennessee has the most with 13, followed by Ohio with 11. Of the Southern states, South Carolina has the least with three.
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One Mississippi Klan group that didn’t make the list because of inactivity is Royal Confederate Knights of the Ku Klux Klan headed by Jordan Gollub of Jackson.“We haven’t had a march since 2001,” he said. “We had a march in Biloxi and a march in Carthage. It made you feel good that day, but I don’t think it changes the political atmosphere. It doesn’t put Bennie Thompson (the state’s lone African-American congressman) out of office.”
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The Council of Conservative Citizens, formed in the mid-1980s, has roots in the pro-segregationist white Citizens Council. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report describes the St. Louis-based group as a white supremacist organization.
LINK:
Will KKK fade into history?
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And last up, for today, a sympathetic look at Bernie Ebbers – who deserves no sympathy IMO.
People still see a lot of good in Bernie Ebbers — good works, good intentions and good ol’ boy — qualities that can spawn sympathy, especially in Mississippi and the South, experts say.
And then we have the whining about him being from Mississippi hurting his chances for the jury verdict in New York. Well, boo hoo for him. Last time I checked, the federal laws on fraudulent behavior are the same everywhere in the U.S.
Ebbers’ Mississippi background probably didn’t help him in New York, some experts say, but it has at least benefitted him in the court of public opinion in these parts: “The positive reaction comes from people who know him,” says Charles Reagan Wilson, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
It’s awfully easy to be seen as a nice guy by your chosen friends and charities when you steal billions from unknown other people and give thousands or even millions to your chosen, especially if you wear cowboy boots and smile.
LINK:
Some still see good in ex-CEO
Well, there you have it. My first “This is My South” diary. I hope you don’t take my negativism here as defeatism. Au contraire, I want to rat out every last racist, religiously intolerant, gullible Mississipian’s attitudes in an effort to help change these things. I would not still be living here if I did not also enjoy the good things about the South and Jackson, Mississippi, in particular. But today I am in no mood to describe the goodnesses. I feel like stomping on the piss-ant ideas that rule the minds of my some of my fellow local citizens.
I’m blueneck, and This is My South.