January 25, 2026
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Deep Something

The site for ranting and reporting by John Masters

Culture

I would classify things in this category that were related to arts, literature, cinema, performance. Things that make us and the world better.

Culture Featured Places Politics Legislature Society Gay Issues 

Florida Amendment 2-The Great Debate Part 1

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This entry is part 4 of 35 in the series Gay Marriage

At the end of March, Nadine Smith, Co-Chair of Fairness for All Families, took on John Stemberger of Florida Family Council at the Orlando Tiger Bay Club for debate on the Amendment 2, the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment. Basically, he got his ass handed to him by Ms. Smith, but I don’t think she was aggressive enough. The event was videotaped, and posted on Youtube in four parts. This is the first in a series about each of the four segments of the debate.

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Politics Society Culture Movies 

Kite Runner, The

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In a divided country on the verge of war, two childhood friends, Amir and Hassan, are about to be torn apart forever. It’s a glorious afternoon in Kabul and the skies are bursting with the exhilarating joy of a kite-fighting tournament. But in the aftermath of the day’s victory, one boy’s fearful act of betrayal will mark their lives forever and set in motion an epic quest for redemption. Now, after 20 years of living in America, Amir returns to a perilous Afghanistan under the Taliban’s iron-fisted rule to face the secrets that still haunt him and take one last daring chance to set things right.

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Culture Movies 

Never Back Down

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Jake Tyler has recently moved to Orlando, Florida with his family to support his younger brother’s shot at a professional tennis career. Jake was a star athlete on the football team at home, but in this new city he is an outsider with a reputation for being a quick tempered brawler. Making an attempt to fit in, at the invitation of a flirtatious classmate, Baja, Jake goes to a party where he is unwittingly pulled into a fight with a bully named Ryan McDonald.

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Culture Movies 

Atonement

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In 1935, 13-year-old fledgling writer Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) and her family live a life of wealth and privilege in their enormous mansion. On the warmest day of the year, the country estate takes on an unsettling hothouse atmosphere, stoking Briony’s vivid imagination. Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), the educated son of the family’s housekeeper, carries a torch for Briony’s headstrong older sister Cecilia (Kiera Knightley). Cecilia, he hopes, has comparable feelings; all it will take is one spark for this relationship to combust. When it does, Briony – who has a crush on Robbie – is compelled to interfere, going so far as accusing Robbie of a crime he did not commit. Cecilia and Robbie declare their love for each other, but he is arrested – and with Briony bearing false witness, the course of three lives is changed forever. Briony continues to seek forgiveness for her childhood misdeed. Through a terrible and courageous act of imagination, she finds the path to her uncertain atonement, and to an understanding of the power of enduring love.

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Culture Religion 

Annual Pew Forum Survey on Religion in America-The Results Are In

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TThe Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released annual survey results that indicate nearly half of American adults leave the “faith tradition they were raised in to either join another religion or drop out of organized religion altogether. Ths year though, the unaffiliated people who say they are religious but don’t claim allegiance to any particular institution or tradition are now the fourth largest religious group in America.

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Culture Religion Science Society Crime Gay Issues Right Wingnuts 

Ellen DeGeneres Remembers Murdered Gay Teen

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All these religious right wingnuts think they absolve themselves of any responsibility for the violence purpetrated against gay people when they say, “Oh we don’t hate gays, we just hate the sin.” Bullshit. This is what you have wrought, and you will stand in judgement for it. These wingnuts love to invoke the Old Testament wrath of God when it comes to homosexuality. I’d remind them the prophets of the Old Testament were usually warning of God’s wrath in the context of how corrupt the religious leaders’ of that time had become. Micah summed it well: “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

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Culture Movies Movies I Own 

Knocked Up

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Alison Scott is an up-and-coming entertainment journalist whose 24-year-old life is on the fast track. But it gets seriously derailed when a drunken one-nighter with slacker Ben Stone results in an unwanted pregnancy. Faced with the prospect of going it alone or getting to know the baby’s father, Alison decides to give the lovable doof a chance. An overgrown kid who has no desire to settle down, Ben learns that he has a big decision to make with his kid’s mom-to-be: will he hit the road or stay in the picture! Courting a woman you’ve just knocked up, however, proves to be a little difficult when the two try their hands at dating. As they discover more about one another, it becomes painfully obvious that theyâ¿¿re not the soul mates they’d hoped they might be. With Alison’s harried sister Debbie and hen-pecked brother-in-law Pete the only parenting role models the young lovers have, things get even more confusing. Should they raise the baby together? What makes a happy lifetime partnership after all? A couple of drinks and a wild night later, they’ve got nine confusing months to figure it out.

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