Prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda played Fulton the tape of the 911 call from the night of the fatal confrontation between Zimmerman and Martin in which could be heard a man wailing in pain before being silenced by a gun shot.
“Ma’am that scream or yell, do you recognize that?” de la Rionda asked.
“Yes,” said Fulton. Asked who she thought it was, Fulton confirmed: “Trayvon Benjamin Martin.”
While the prosecution argues that the screams for help came from Martin, the defense is claiming they actually came from George Zimmerman.
This is important to their case because it would help them argue that Zimmerman, who had left his car contrary to advice, and who also outweighed Martin and was obviously armed, had killed Martin in self-defense.
“Belén,” as the media calls her, is 11-years-old. Since she was nine, she has been repeatedly raped by her mother’s boyfriend, who is 32. Belén didn’t tell anyone about the abuse because her abuser threatened that he would kill her. Her mother claims that the relationship between her boyfriend and her daughter, which started when she 9, was consensual! But Belén’s grandmother alerted the police about the crime when she saw her grandaughter was pregnant.
Yep. Belen is 14 weeks pregnant. And she lives in one of the five countries where abortion is illegal under any circumstances, with no exceptions whatsoever, even in cases of rape, incest, the safety or the life of the woman. In 1931, Chile legalized therepeutic abortions for health reasons, but the dictator Augusto Pinochet, famous for his violations of human rights and his penchant for torture, banned abortion completely in 1989. It was only in 2004 that Chile legalized divorce. And to this day, Chile lives under the dictatorship’s abortion laws.
On Monday, Belén appeared on television and said the following heartbreaking words: “It will be a like a doll that I will hold in my arms … I will love it a lot, whatever it is, even though it’s from this man who hurt me.” […]
Viral videos and the issue of women’s self-esteem don’t usually go hand in hand. But two videos that deal with the issue in very different ways are all over the internets. In one video, Dustin Hoffman breaks down as he explains how preparing for his female role in Tootsie made him realize how dismissive of conventionally unattractive women he had been for his entire life.
Once in his female makeup, Hoffman wanted to be a more attractive woman. The makeup artist told him this was as attractive as he would get. And he suddenly, for the first time ever, recognized the way he and society ignore and marginalize women who are not conventionally attractive.
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which limited marriage to existing between a man and a woman, is unconstitutional and that there was no legal standing to appeal the overturning of Prop 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California. It didn’t take long for opponents of marriage equality to freak out about these rulings, which, apparently, signal the end of the world as we know. (And they don’t feel fine.) Here are some of the best responses.
1. IT’S THE WORK OF SATAN!
In a blog post with the understated title of Satan’s End-Time Strategy to Outlaw Traditional Marriage in Full Swing, Charisma editor Jennifer LeClaire writes: “Today’s rulings set into motion a dynamic that could mainstream gay marriage in this nation sooner than later—and forward the satanic agenda to eventually end a godly institution that’s almost as old as the world itself.”
2. AMERICA IS IN ITS “DEATH THROES”!
Christian radio broadcaster Janet Mefferd said: “If you think this is just an attack on marriage, it isn’t; it’s an attack on your liberty, an attack on the rule of law and it’s an attack on every person in California…Look who you have running your state, all these people have done in the California legislature is it’s gay law here and gay law there and gay role models and ban gay reparative therapy for minors…it’s totalitarian.” She also said America is in its “death throes.”
Mefferd isn’t the only one with death on the mind. Rick Santorum fears that with the DOMA ruling, the Supreme Court will establish some sort of constitutional right or find that marriage is unconstitutional in its current form. “That to me will put the death knell in it.”
3. IT’S JUST LIKE PEARL HARBOR!
The American Decency Association’s Lisa Van Houten warned that the Supreme Court’s DOMA decision “will live in infamy” like Pearl Harbor:
As we look back on history there are dates which we now see were crossroads, turning points for nations and cultures. July 4, 1776; June 6, 1944. December 7, 1941; January 22, 1973. Battles fought, decisions made – some establishing goodness and justice, others are dates that ‘will live in infamy.’ I believe today, June 26, 2013, is the latter. A date when the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of same sex marriage, and undermined true marriage – one man and one woman – which was instituted, not by any government, but by God.
What do you expect, though, since, as Van Houten explains, “The homosexual agenda cannot and will not abide peaceably alongside the true, biblical institutions of marriage and family as ordained by God. As the homosexual agenda is legitimized – even by the United States Supreme Court – marriage, family, and our religious liberty will be undermined.”
Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians have been gathering in Tahrir Square since June 30, protesting against President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. And just minutes ago, the Egyptian Army announced it suspended the constitution and removed the president. Though much of the American media is calling this a coup, it certainly doesn’t look like a coup to the estimated 30,000 people in Egypt’s streets. As I watched the breaking news, I was Facebook-chatting with my friend, Sherif Joseph Rizk, apublisher and political organizer, who co-founded the organization The New Republic Group. I asked him if this was a coup and he responded, “it’s a people’s coup!” In the words of journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who is reporting from Cairo’s Tahrir Square: “We saw a rejection of Hosni Mubarak that threw him out of office, a rejection of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces ruling Egypt, and now a rejection and a revolution against the Muslim Brotherhood. [The people] are revolting against these authoritarian elements that deny them political and economic agency … The more important struggle is the one that is coming from the ground up — and that is a rejection of authoritarianism and a paternalistic form of government.” Here are 15 striking photos posted on Instagram and twitpic of the popular movement that removed Egypt’s president.
Wendy Davis became a rock star Tuesday night after standing for 11 hours without going to the bathroom, sitting, or leaning, to block the passage of a bill that would have closed nearly all of Texas’s abortion clinics. But this rock star status is long overdue. Here’s why.
1. She Works/Worked Hard For the Money
She’s a hard worker. She had two jobs by the time she was 14 to help support her single mother and three siblings. By 19, Wendy was a single mother herself, and once again worked two jobs.
2. She Gets Awards Like Whoa
She received the “Bold Woman Award” from Girls, Inc., “Freshman of the Year” from AARP, “Champion for Children Award” from the Equity Center, and “Texas Women’s Health Champion Award” from the Texas Association of OB-GYNs. In 2009, Texas Monthly named her “Rookie of the Year.” And she was chosen by the readers of Fort Worth Weekly as the “Best Servant of the People.” Davis was recently listed among “12 State Legislators to Watch in 2012” by Governing Magazine.
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand reproductive-freedom curtailing words. Here’s the lovely Ohio governor, John Kasich (R), surrounded by a bunch of dudes, of course, signing a budget which contains severe anti-chose provisions.
The new budget, which takes effect on Monday, and was signed Sunday, will defund Planned Parenthood clinics, reallocate family planning resources to “crisis pregnancy centers,” deny funding to rape crisis centers that deign to give out any information about abortion services, shutter abortion clinics by imposing restrictions, and force doctors to tell women who want an abortion about a b.s. study linking abortion to breast cancer and the “fetal heartbeat.”
The rap duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis has broken records with their hits “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us.” And now, with their pro-marriage equality hit “Same Love,” which features out lesbian Mary Lambert, they’re shattering stereotypes.
Just as “Same Love” supported this movement, the recent Supreme Court rulings on DOMA and Prop 8 are helping the song become an even greater hit. The song hit the charts in February, when several states were voting on marriage equality and the Supreme Court was considering challenges to DOMA and Prop 8. Wednesday, when the Supreme Court ruled on both cases, “Same Love” rose to No. 28 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, up from No. 65 three weeks ago. Sales of the song rose by 23 percent last week from the week before to a total of more than 788,000 copies, and views of the single’s video on YouTube had approached 53 million by Sunday.
As I wrote on Wednesday, Texas State Senator Wendy Davis (a Democrat, duh) is a rock star. Not only did she stand for 11 hours to block a draconian anti-choice bill, she kept her cool in the face of some seriously ridiculous statements and actions from her opponents.
1. When a Congresswoman Gets Confused
Rep. Jodie Laubenberg (R): “In the emergency room they have what’s called rape kits where a woman can get cleaned out … The woman had five months to make that decision, at this point we are looking at a baby that is very far along in its development.”
2. When An Anti-Choice State Senator Says He Loves Women
State Senator Eddie Lucio, Jr. explains he’s anti-choice but also says, “I love women.”
12-year-old Madison Baxter has been playing football since second grade. She played on her football team in sixth grade. But this year she was told not to come to tryout for the seventh-grade team because she is provoking “impure thoughts.” Baxter’s mother says this was the explanation offered by Patrick Stuart an administrator at the Strong Rock Christian Academy private school Madison attends. Cassy Blythe, Madison’s mother, told Atlanta’s WXIA-TV,
“In the meeting with the CEO of the school [Patrick Stuart], I was told that the reasons behind it were one, that the boys were going to start lusting after her and have impure thoughts about her and that the locker-room talk was not appropriate for a female to hear even though she had a separate locker room from the boys.”
katiehalper.com 