Timothy Thompson, a former news reporter for Portland radio station KXL, will have 11 years and 6 months in prison to think about the severity of what he did to his wife Susan and their three young children, Knapp said. In a bench trial with no jury, Knapp found Thompson guilty of eight counts of assault and one of criminal mistreatment.... Since his arrest, Timothy Thompson said the bruising came from a single occasion when the couple’s “game” of correction got out of control. That story was clearly a lie, McKey said. The bruising was almost unbelievable—purple, green, yellow, red and blue. Knee to waist. Breast to navel. Looking more like the lividity of a corpse than injuries to living tissue, they were administered over years with such exacting care that no one would even notice them on a fully-clothed Susan, McKey said.

The beating game came to an end when the police were called to the house because a woman was screaming. Thompson wasn't home but the police noticed cuts and bruises and that Susan Thompson, "was barely strong enough to lift her infant son." The Thompsons—Mr. and Mrs.—argued that the beatings were a game meant to compensate for Susan Thompson's "lack of discipline" growing up. The couple also wanted a "traditional American family," complete with a submissive wife who stays home with the kids, but Susan Thompson had a hard time submitting. So, beatings. It was all supposed to be "titillating and fun," Mr. Thompson told the court—it was supposed to be consensual sex play—but the court didn't buy it and neither do I. First, because Susan Thompson was punished when she tried to call her parents, which smacks—sorry—the typical abuser's attempt to isolate his victim. And then there's this:

In April of 2009, the beatings escalated to 70 to 100 swats a day. Thompson decided to start using a surveyor’s stick instead of a belt because his arm was getting sore, McKey said. After he was done, daddy would sometimes have the children take the rod and smack the bruises, too, to “let mommy know she had to learn her lesson,” McKey said.

Sorry, but it's not a consensual adult sex game if you're forcing your children to participate. Christ.

Nationally, about a third of female murder victims are killed by a husband or boyfriend each year, according to the Justice Department. But that number was closer to about 45 percent last year in Kentucky.

Once again: if homosexuality was a choice, like conservative Christians insisting that it is, a lot more women would've chosen it by now.

That's Aladdin from Aladdin, John from Pocahontas, and David from Lilo & Stitch, respectively. Various other princes, charming and otherwise, can be found here—there's even one with chest hair (Gaston from Beauty and the Beast). The sexed-up-but-not-grown-up drawing of Peter Pan is very disturbing—and wrong and retina-singeing—as are the drawings of actors from live-action Disney films (Orlando Bloom, Zac Efron). But if you've always wanted to see James Marsden in a harness and chaps—this is your chance. (Thanks to Slog tipper Sai.)

UPDATE: Coulda, shoulda, woulda linked to the artist's website. It's here. It's amazing. Go.

Queers can't have titties and beers?

The shirt on the woman with the "good hair" is made and sold by marcadeteez.

A Kent man and his ex-wife have been arrested after authorities say they filmed themselves raping a 4-year-old girl and sending photos of the abuse to a man facing child-molestation charges in Southern California. Brian Beston, 36, and ex-wife Hollie Beston, 31, of Burien, were arrested by Seattle police last week after the FBI learned of the couple from a child-molestation suspect in Southern California.... The California man, 38-year-old Richard Hockaday, told federal investigators that he met the Bestons over Craigslist.

The full story is here.

"Approving R-71 will only harm people like this," adds Matt. "We must reject it. Clearly."

I think Matt is being sarcastic here. In all fairness to those who oppose domestic partnerships in Washington state, the United Kingdom enacted civil partnerships for same-sex couples—offering all the same rights of marriage—in 2004. Joanne Hale made no attempts on her husband's life before gay couples in the UK had access to all the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexual couples. It can't be a coincidence.

h/t: Everything Is Terrible!

A little background: doctors had warned the man that circumcising a four-year-old was too risky—too risky for doctors to consider doing it. The man did it anyway. And why did he use a horse coagulant? "Because it was cheaper than a $30 coagulant for people." And how'd the procedure go? "He laid DJ on clean garbage bags on the kitchen floor and put a towel or diaper under him, then cut the foreskin, sometimes with a sawing motion." The court found that the razor the man used was "neither sharp nor sterile." And why did the man do this to his kid?

DJW is a former Jehovah's Witness who now follows the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Here’s what happened, according to a summary of the case in the judge’s ruling: DJW became interested in circumcision after reading the books of Richard Hoskins, who advocates circumcision and claims there are Biblical answers to "all of the problems in society, including the number of abortions and homosexuals, and the national debt," judge wrote.

Yes, you read that right. An interracial couple. Not gay—interracial. Yes, it's still 2009.

Bardwell, of course, is not a racist. Some of his best customers are black.

... Bardwell told the Daily Star of Hammond that he was not a racist.

"I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children."

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."

Okay look, you unbelievable moron. No child chooses their parents. ALL children are born into a "situation they didn't bring on themselves."

Like being born to parents who are insane racists, for example.

And it's nice that you've come to this blanket conclusion about millions of relationships and all, based on "witnessing some interracial marriages," but FUCK YOU.

The article then goes on to quote the ACLU of Louisiana's Katie Schwartzman as saying, "The Supreme Court ruled as far back as 1963 that the government cannot tell people who they can and cannot marry."

Umm.. Katie? The Court only said the government can't say who people can and cannot marry based on race. You may have noticed that they still have a little problem with some other people getting married. Read your employee handbook.

Then there's this:

According to the clerk of court's office, application for a marriage license must be made three days before the ceremony because there is a 72-hour waiting period. The applicants are asked if they have previously been married. If so, they must show how the marriage ended, such as divorce.

Other than that, all they need is a birth certificate and Social Security card.

AND TO HAVE DIFFERENT GENITALS.

A Lancaster County man has been arrested and charged with sexually propositioning his estranged 13-year-old daughter on Facebook, officials said today.... The Inquirer is not identifying the Lancaster County man because his daughter shares his last name. The Inquirer does not identify alleged victims of sex crimes. Corbett's office provided the following account of the alleged crime:

The man, who lives in Lititz and had no contact with his daughter for 10 years, located her on Facebook and began sexually propositioning her, calling himself "Bad Daddy." The man proposed meeting the girl for sex and explained sex acts in graphic detail, telling her, "not many other fathers and daughters are this brave, so not many of them are so lucky to experience all these pleasures."

The girl alerted her mother, who contacted the Ephrata Borough Police Department. Agents from the Attorney General's Child Predator Unit and Ephrata Police arrested the man when he arrived at a predetermined meeting location on Wednesday. Agents seized a camera, tripod and an unopened box of condoms from his vehicle.

Excuse me while I go boil my brain.

Wasting money on protein powders and creatine? I got a better solution for you. Find out what I did.

Um... what DID you do? It ain't right. Can you put it back? I kinda think you were pretty okay before. Also, this internet ad just keeps popping up today. It makes me think of Thanksgiving. Well, Thanksgiving turkey. And Thanksgiving turkey recipes. And that's not right either.

The Stansels rejected Dr. Grunert’s advice and, since then, their vision of a family has collapsed into excruciating loss: the deaths of four children after their premature births on Aug. 4, including one who died late Sunday night. The two other infants remain in neonatal intensive care, their futures uncertain.

“I feel like we bonded with all of them, the short time they were here,” Mr. Stansel said. “We were able to hold them before they passed away.”

And it was really hard to feel sorry for them when I flipped the paper over and saw the picture of the Stansels that was under the fold: they're posing with the casket containing the remains of three of their children—and they couldn't look more pleased with themselves. And then I read the rest of the story and I wanted to kill the Stansels with my bare hands...

When Dr. Grunert discovered that Mrs. Stansel was carrying multiple fetuses, he handicapped her odds of delivering six healthy infants at practically zero. Eliminating some of the fetuses would give the others the best chance for survival....

For the Stansels, the decision was influenced by their membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The church generally opposes abortion. After learning that Mrs. Stansel was carrying sextuplets, the Stansels decided to meet with church elders and consult with a reduction specialist.

“It just never felt right,” Mr. Stansel said. “We prayed many nights. A lot of sleepless nights. Originally we thought we might do the reduction. We chose to carry all six and, we believe, let God do what he’s going to do.”

What? If you were gonna let God do what He's going to do, you shouldn't have sought out fertility treatments. Here's what God was gonna do: God was gonna make you infertile. God did that, actually, and then you thwarted God's plan for you—that you be infertile—and availed yourselves of the latest medical technologies and sought the help fertility specialists. Then you ignored the advice of your doctors and refused to reduce the number of fetuses you were carrying and now four premature infants have died in great pain and two more will very likely die—but, hey, you'll get another smug, self-satisfied, just-letting-God-do-what-he's-gonna-do photo op out of it, so it's not a total loss. And it's all material for the blog you're writing about "your journey," and there'll probably be a book deal in it for you when it's all over ("Thom & Amanda Minus 6").

Mrs. Stansel delivered the sextuplets on Aug. 4, about 14 weeks premature. The babies were born so early that no medical care would have been rendered unless the parents requested it.

Dr. Jarriel, the neonatologist, said the survival rate of babies at the stage they were born was about 60 percent to 65 percent. If they survived, the Stansels were told, there was a 100 percent chance that they would have problems. But the couple asked the hospital for the most extraordinary measures to save them.

“We wanted to do all we could for them, to save them,” Mr. Stansel said.

“Give them that chance,” Mrs. Stansel added. “That’s the doctors giving their statistics. God doesn’t work in statistics.”

Four of their six babies are now dead. So it looks like God does work in statistics after all—if He didn't, Mrs. Stansel, then the world would be an entirely random/miraculous place and we wouldn't be able to make any predictions about anything and there wouldn't be stats about anything. Jesus.

Earlier in the week I wrote up the results of a study that showed that women who were on the pill when they were dating may wind up partnered with mates they're not all that into once they go off the birth control pill. The pill suppresses ovulation and studies have shown that ovulating women prefer men who are more masculine and "more... genetically unrelated," like the butch guy on the right; women who aren't ovulating prefer guys who are more feminine and genetically more similar, like the pansy on the left. From my post:

Alvergne and Lummaa theorize that all those suppressed ovulations may have dire consequences where sexual compatibility and long-term marital success are concerned. It can't be pleasant, after all, to realize you're not as attracted to your spouse as you thought you were once you stop taking the pill. And couples who are genetically similar—the kind of pairings the pill promotes—are more likely to have infertility issues. Which is, um, also bad. And then there's this: since men have been shown to find ovulating women more attractive, "...the use of oral contraceptives may influence a woman’s ability to attract a mate by reducing attractiveness to men, thereby disrupting her ability to compete with normally cycling women for access to mate."

I wrote the authors of the study—Dr. Alexandra Alvergne and Dr. Virpi Lummaa of the University of Sheffield—asked what they thought its implications were. Should women switch to the IUD? Should an engaged woman go off the pill to make sure she's not marrying a too-genetically-similar swish? Should we, you know, panic? Dr. Alvergne wrote me right back... but her email wound up in my spam folder. (Sorry about that, Dr. Alvergne.) Her letter—and her answers—after the jump...

Then you might want to read the results of a new study published this morning in Trends in Ecology and Evolution: "Does the Contraceptive Pill Alter Mate Choice In Humans?"

Dr. Alexandra Alvergne and Dr. Virpi Lummaa of the University of Sheffield review "emerging evidence suggesting that contraceptive methods which alter a woman’s natural hormonal cycles" may be messing up straight peoples' sex lives and married lives. It may also raise "evolutionary questions and concerns," write Alvergne and Lummaa. It goes like this: the type of man a woman finds attractive varies pretty widely according to her menstrual cycle. Women who are ovulating prefer men who are more masculine and "more... genetically unrelated," like the guy on the right, above; women who aren't ovulating prefer guys who are more feminine and genetically more similar, like the guy on the left. Since the pill suppresses ovulation, and since many women are on the pill when they're dating and sleeping around—or "selecting a mate," as the docs put it—women may be marrying men they find attractive on the pill but not so much once they've gone off the pill.

Which women tend to do once they're married and want to have children.

Alvergne and Lummaa theorize that all those suppressed ovulations may have dire consequences where sexual compatibility and long-term marital success are concerned. It can't be pleasant, after all, to realize you're not as attracted to your spouse as you thought you were once you stop taking the pill. And couples who are genetically similar—the kind of pairings the pill promotes—are more likely to have infertility issues. Which is, um, also bad. And then there's this: since men have been shown to find ovulating women more attractive, "...the use of oral contraceptives may influence a woman’s ability to attract a mate by reducing attractiveness to men, thereby disrupting her ability to compete with normally cycling women for access to mate." While their study is sure to be cited by religious nuts waging war on the pill, Alvergne and Lummaa cite all the good the pill has done for women:

Any such effects should be weighed against the multiple benefits that the invention of the pill has brought. This revolutionary contraceptive method has given women unprecedented control over their fertility with the possibility to sample different partners before reproduction, to control their number of children, to reach optimal birth spacing given circumstances or to end reproductive career before menopause if desired, which has had a considerable impact on their social life. For instance, a sharp increase in college attendance and graduation rates for women was observed after the pill was legalized.

Giving women control over their fertility, allowing them to sample different partners, more women going to college—you can see why religious conservatives have problem with the pill. You can download a PDF of the study here. I've also sent a some questions to the study's authors—should women switch to the IUD? should an engaged woman go off the pill to make sure she's not marrying a too-genetically-similar swish? and what does all of this mean for gay marriage? and the ballot booth that is their [RSVP] envelopes?—and I'll share their answers with you when I hear back.

Via JoeMyGod.

An Oregon man convicted of criminal mistreatment in the faith-healing death of his 15-month-old daughter has been released from jail.... Ava Worthington had a large cyst on her neck that impeded her breathing and eating, contributing to her fatal pneumonia. She died in March 2008 while church members gathered around her for prayer and anointed her with olive oil.

Ava Worthington's father served less than two months. Her mother was acquitted.

Via The High Definite.

The 2010 California Marriage Protection Act would protect the sacred sanctity of marriage not by banning gay marriage—that's already illegal, thanks to straight Californians who were brave enough to sacrifice the rights of gay citizens in order to save marriage—but this time by banning straight divorce. "You said 'Til death do us part,'" the backers of this initiative remind straight voters, and "you're not dead yet."

Patricia Mauceri of ABC's One Life To Live claims she was fired from the show in late June because her religious beliefs did not allow her to go along with a storyline that involved her character's son coming out of the closet.

Mauceri didn't object to her character's son coming out, only to her character's reaction to the news: the mom Mauceri plays on TV didn't reject the fictional gay son played by some other actor on TV. The Right Wing Christian Gay Haters Club has adopted Mauceri as their new persecuted Christian martyr. Because, as Joe points out, none of us are truly free so long as daytime TV actresses aren't allowed to write and edit their own scripts.

The image is from Ari V's photostream.

And you can watch it TONIGHT (7 pm, Rendezvous, free) at BadMovieArt (which I previously wrote about here). BadMovieArt is FUN. A smart person would not miss Samurai Cop. Are you a smart person? Have you been circumcised?

h/t: Mary Traverse!

NAIROBI, Kenya — A Kenyan man's offer of 40 goats and 20 cows for Chelsea Clinton's hand in marriage may still be on the table — and Hillary Rodham Clinton has promised to convey the "very kind offer" to her daughter.

This is the chance of a lifetime!

Image by meaduva.