"Don't you wish some people had search engines installed in their foreheads?"

A blogger with too much time on his hands uses a search engine to compare the rank-and-file content of an organization’s website to its official rhetoric. “[W]hen one types the word “abortion” into NOW’s search engine, 853 articles that mention the subject appear. But surely childbirth is something an organization that claims to be ‘for women’ should provide information about, right? Someone should tell the gals at NOW — their search engine provides exactly 30 articles that mention this term, and most of these describe its dangers and complications…. the term ‘married women’ was mentioned in 10 articles, while ‘lesbian’ was mentioned in 584.” Tony Woodlief“Don’t you wish some people had search engines installed in their foreheads?”Sand in the Gears)

Of course, “lesbian” can be used as both an adjective and a noun, so that single word is likely to appear more frequently than the phrase “married women”. Articles of interest to married women might never use the phrase “married women,” instead using terms such as “wife”, “spouse,” “marriage”, or “married couples”. There simply aren’t as many synonyms for “lesbian”, though terms like “homosexual” or “same-sex” might yield additional results. Further, not all heterosexual women are married, so it’s misleading to contrast “lesbian” with “married women”. Woodlief makes no claim that his search engine experiments are scientific, and he doesn’t hide his politically incorrect conservatism. To be fair, he attacks Republicans as well, and he uses his methodology to examine the Baptist fixation on “homosexuality” over other sins. But even more fun is his quirky analysis of the “justice to Jesus ratio” — the more conservative the church, the fewer hits its website returns for “justice,” and the more liberal the church, the fewer hits it returns for “Jesus”.

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Dennis G. Jerz