Story
European Court: Google Must Yield on Personal Info
People should have some say over the results that pop up when they conduct a search of their own name online, Europe's highest court said Tuesday.
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Red Wolf Pups Named at Mississippi Zoo
Seven endangered red wolf pups now have Choctaw names to honor the state's only federally recognized Indian tribe.
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Events
Community Meetings and Events
Made for a Runway II Fashion Weekend is Friday, May 16, from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at Jackson Convention Complex.
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High Cost, Corruption Claims Mar Brazil World Cup
The cost of building Brasilia's World Cup stadium has nearly tripled to $900 million in public funds, largely due to allegedly fraudulent billing, government auditors say.
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LGBT
Ole Miss Students to Protest Gov. Phil Bryant's Signing of SB 2681 at Graduation
At a leafy college campus in north Mississippi and an upscale dinner club in New York, groups are protesting a Mississippi law that opponents say could sanction discrimination against gays …
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To Mommy With Love
I have always been a pretty artsy-craftsy person. It came from my mom, who created her own art in frames by using old fabric and leftover wallpaper from her DIY …
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Proud Mama
My mom is a sigher. On any given day, she would walk in after work, sling her leather purse onto the kitchen counter and let out a heaving sigh that …
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Dear Mom
No day goes by that I don't think of her. I sometimes wonder how she found and continues to find the willpower, and I have for many years.
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City & County
Who Will Take Ward 6?
Each of Jackson's seven wards is important, but there's something special about Ward 6. Located wholly on the city's gritty south side, the ward has had representation in each of …
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Food
All Things in Moderation
"Hungry for Change" focuses on many of the things the diet, weight-loss, and food industries don't want us to know, and what keeps us from being healthy.
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Biz Roundup
Classic Movies and Fine Sicilian Dining
Vintage Movie and Entertainment Theater shows classic black and white, silent and other older films, featuring the likes of Bing Crosby, Mickey Rooney, Bela Lugosi and John Wayne.
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Kemper Overruns Drag Down Southern Co. Stock
Troubles at the Kemper County power plant that Mississippi Power Co. is building are so great that they're dragging down the stock of parent Southern Co.
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Events
Community Meetings and Events
The Canton Flea Market is Thursday, May 8 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Historic Canton Square.
Story
South Korea Changing Maritime Rules After Sinking
The South Korean government is scrambling to fix what the prime minister calls the "deep-rooted evils" that contributed to last month's ferry sinking, which left more than 300 people dead …
Story
Nigeria: Boko Haram Threatens to Sell Kidnapped Girls
Nigeria's Islamic extremist leader is threatening to sell the more than 300 teenage schoolgirls abducted from a school in the remote northeast three weeks ago, in a new videotape received …
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City & County
Hendrix, Amos Among Ward 6 Possibles
With Tony Yarber becoming Jackson's fourth mayor in a year's time, a special election will be required to fill his old Ward 6 seat.
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Botched Execution Could Renew 'Cruel' Challenges
The botched execution of an Oklahoma inmate is certain to fire up the debate over what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment—the phrase written into the U.S. Constitution and defined by …
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The Back Story on the Anti-Gay Alliance Attacking Mississippi's "If You're Buying" Campaign
By Donna LaddThis falls in the can't-make-it-up column.
Most of you know that Mitchell Moore of Campbell's Bakery, who is straight, and Eddie Outlaw of William Wallace Salon, who is gay, and others started the amazing "If You're Buying, We're Selling" campaign. They want Mississippi business owners to put stickers in their windows to indicate that they don't discriminate, in response to SB 2681, Mississippi's version of the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act." (See lots of business owners with the icon in their ads in this week's JFP, too.)
So, the religious right is apparently not happy with the international media coverage the campaign is getting -- and from Mississippi, which is supposed to be their wheelhouse, you know. They really didn't like it when Emily Pettus of the AP (the JFP's next-door neighbors) did a story about this that was picked up by many outlets.
In response, they went on a PR tear to take back the messaging. Greg Scott, who tweets at @adfmedia, led the way, tweeting this week in response to the AP story: "Sticker folks protest imaginary law .@AP bows false narrative, RFRA not "vaguely written," no threat to "=treatment" http://bit.ly/QEU2El
Curious, I did some research. Turns out, Scott is the VP for media communications for Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly Alliance Defense Fund), a nonprofit group founded in 1994 by extreme-right and vocally anti-gay leaders including James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association. (Interestingly, Mississippi's Judge Charles Pickering is also on the board.)
Not to be outdone, the American Family Association, an alliance co-founder, also blasted the sticker campaign on a Christian "news" site, which is part of the American Family News Network, which is part of the ... American Family Association. "It's not really a buying campaign, but it's a bully campaign," said Buddy Smith, executive vice president of Tupelo-based American Family Association, "and it's being carried out by radical homosexual activists who intend to trample the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture."
The Southern Poverty Law Center includes the alliance (and AFA) on its list of a dozen groups that drive the "religious right's anti-gay crusade." On its website, it brags that its "attorneys have successfully defended marriage as the union between one man and one woman in over 40 cases nationwide."
SPLC indicates that the alliance was established in the early 1990s in response to gay-rights battles in the courts—which it clearly believes is the "principal" threat to religious freedom. ADF President Alan Sears and Vice President Craig Osten wrote " The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom," which ties homosexuality to pedophilia and other "disordered sexual behavior."
SPLC states: "The ADF has also mounted legal challenges to gay military service, marriage, adoption and foster-parenting, as well as to domestic partner benefits around the nation. It trains other attorneys 'to battle the radical homosexual …
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Lance Bass on God, Being Gay and Loving His Sweet Mama
Two years after I graduated from high school in 2004, Lance Bass came out of the closet on the cover of People Magazine. His revelation struck a chord for me …
