Just Married! UNICEF’s Photo of the Year

He’s forty, she’s eleven. And they are a couple – the Afghan man Mohammed F.* and the child Ghulam H.*. “We needed the money”, Ghulam’s parents said. Faiz claims he is going to send her to school. But the women of Damarda village in Afghanistan’s Ghor province know better: “Our men don’t want educated women.” They predict that Ghulam will be married within a few weeks after her engagement in 2006, so as to bear children for Faiz.

Click here read the rest of the accompanying blurb and to see the Photo of the Year runners up.

Evangelicals encourage abandonment, torture and murder of “child witches”

I’m speechless. This photo essay from The Guardian brought tears to my eyes.

“In Akwa Ibom, Nigeria, evangelical preachers encourage people to believe children are witches, and abuse, abandonment and even murder follows.”

Above: “Ekemini Abia is 13. Her father tied her to a tree by her ankles and left her there. She was found, half-starved, over a week later.”

Guess how I feel about religion and religious beliefs right about now.

Should we “take this nation back for Christ”? Huckabee thinks so.

Do you know what a Christian Dominionist is? Mike Huckabee does and he wants certain voters to identify him as such. Christian Dominionists want “a nation governed by Christians or a nation governed by a conservative Christian understanding of biblical law.”

Rolling Stone further expounds on dominionists:

Meet the Dominionists — biblical literalists who believe God has called them to take over the U.S. government…They want to rewrite schoolbooks to reflect a Christian version of American history, pack the nation’s courts with judges who follow Old Testament law, post the Ten Commandments in every courthouse and make it a felony for gay men to have sex and women to have abortions. In Florida, when the courts ordered Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube removed, it was the Dominionists who organized round-the-clock protests and issued a fiery call for Gov. Jeb Bush to defy the law and take Schiavo into state custody. Their ultimate goal is to plant the seeds of a “faith-based” government that will endure far longer than Bush’s presidency — all the way until Jesus comes back.”Most people hear them talk about a ‘Christian nation’ and think, ‘Well, that sounds like a good, moral thing,’ says the Rev. Mel White, who ghostwrote Jerry Falwell’s autobiography before breaking with the evangelical movement. “What they don’t know — what even most conservative Christians who voted for Bush don’t know — is that ‘Christian nation’ means something else entirely to these Dominionist leaders. This movement is no more about following the example of Christ than Bush’s Clean Water Act is about clean water.”