July 14, 2009

When They Tell You Marriage Has Been Ordained by God Since the Beginning of Time…

There was no Christian marriage sacrament until the sixteenth century. A Catholic scholar writes that “nothing is more remarkable than the tardiness with which liturgical forms for the marriage ceremony were evolved.” In fact they were not so much evolved as copied from the common law long established under paganism, and had more to do with the sharing of property than the sharing of love. One authority says that in the modern Greek Orthodox Church, the religious wedding service is “intrusive, no real part of the ceremony of marriage, but an elaborate way of calling down a blessing on the ceremonial, or what is left of it, which constitutes the real wedding.”

— Barbara G. Walker
“Heresy”

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June 25, 2009

Things You Learn from Right-Wing Blogs

For instance, did you know that the government is run by secular humanists? And did you know that “a secular humanist believes he or she is a god and does not need the true God”? (Wow, I’m a god!)

And did you know that the “nearly 7 million American Muslims in our country today … enjoy incomes and educational levels that are higher than the American average”? (Where have I heard that before…? Oh, yeah! All gay people are rich, too! Which reminds me — I keep forgetting to inform my wife that we’re rich. We must be, because everyone who hates us keeps saying we are.)

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June 10, 2009

Washington State: “Christians” With Nothing Better to Do Divided Over Killing Domestic Partnerships

You have to wonder about people who call themselves Christians, but whose real religion is solely the persecution of gay people:

What if they actually accomplished everything they set out to do — destroy all our rights (because you know destroying our marriages/civil unions/domestic partnerships is only the tip of the iceberg)? What would they do with the rest of their lives? After Teh Gheyz, there’s nobody left to openly hate, marginalize, persecute…

Case in point: The “Christians” up in Washington state, of such laughably-named anti-gay organizations as “Positive Christian Agenda,” “Faith & Freedom Network,” and “Washington Values Alliance” — who aren’t merely “conservatives” as labeled in the article, but Christians In Name Only, With Nothing Better to Do:

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June 5, 2009

Heterosexual Men We Love: Stupid Evil Bastard

Just trust me and hit it — and enjoy:

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April 14, 2009

Bookmarkable: No Longer Quivering

I remarked (”remarked” being a subjective word; my verbosity IRL even surpasses my verbosity online) to my lovely wife this evening that I never imagined, at this stage in my life, I’d be trying to understand all the peculiar (and I do mean “peculiar”), under-the-radar quirks and rules and code words and the like of religions I neither believed in, nor cared much about. Oh, it’s very important to know a thing or two about religion in general (that Passover has nothing to do with Easter, for instance) just to keep from making a fool of yourself, and very helpful to have a good grasp on others’ belief systems, if for no other reason than to understand what you believe or not, and why (or why not), and to prevent you from getting suckered into snake handling.

But here I am, feeling, in the immortal words of Edina Monsoon, like I hit an oil patch at 35, and have been sliding toward the grave ever since — and, when I’d much rather be gardening, or engaging in hot monkey love, I’m learning about strange, usually bizarre, belief systems I’d rather have kept only at the furthestmost outer fringes of my peripheral vision.

“Know thine enemy” goes the oft-quoted and nearly always mis-cited saying. As I wrote some months ago to Mormons at large, I was quite content to leave you and your church be, and blithely ignore your missionaries on my doorstep. Now, I know more about Mormonism than I ever wanted to, because the Salt Lake PTB decided they weren’t content to leave me be, and barged into my home to rip up my marriage license. Thus, I need to know about Mormonism, so I know what I’m dealing with. And, besides, when you know all about a thing, it ceases to be scary. The Mormon church is no longer scary; the more I know, the more it’s like that fine piece of advice to folks who fear speaking in public: Picture your audience naked. (Granted, I now picture Mormons in their magic underwear — or, since that episode of “Big Love,” in their baker hats and green aprons — which is far less taxing on my imagination. News flash: Gay people do not want to see everyone naked. In fact, most of us want to see very few people naked.)

(Oh, while I’m thinking about it: Our friend and tireless freedom fighter Chino left a comment explaining some Mormon code that flew right past me; if you’d like to know about the “White Horse prophecy,” see his comment here.)

Anyway… I stumbled across a fairly new blog that offers a fascinating look into the mindset of the “Quiverfull” Christians — the sort of “biblical patriarchy” cult (spread through the usually disturbing homeschooling movement) I think Maggie Gallagher would belong to if she weren’t constantly compelled to run off at the mouth, unlike a submissive little wife shouldn’t. It’s called “No Longer Quivering,” written by one Vyckie Garrison, who, after quite the unstable childhood, dove headfirst into the wifely-submission role (she “adored” her role model, Michelle Duggar), popping out as many babies as possible for her ungrateful and domineering husband, even at risk to her own life, because, well, of course, God wants women to be miserable (and gender equality is the tool of Satan).

Vyckie — thank God — emerged from this destructive lifestyle after a year’s correspondence with her un-believing uncle (yes, Christians, g’head, blame the atheist; you will anyway), not unscathed, but definitely far more rational. She takes you through her ongoing journey in lengthy, well-thought-out posts, with, as a big bonus, comments from readers who are, overall, smart, articulate, and compassionate.

Rather than just hit the main link, you might want to start with this article about Vyckie first: “All God’s children” by Kathryn Joyce, author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.

There are also some good related articles linked downpage, particularly “Submit, woman!,” which explores the line (is there one?) between “wifely submission” and domestic abuse. Within this second article is another link, this time to Joyce’s article, “Biblical Battered Wife Syndrome: Christian Women and Domestic Violence,” also a worthy read — especially if you want to know where Rick Warren is coming from.

If you read these pieces first (and they’re quite riveting and digestible, albeit infuriating to anyone with even a shred of self-worth), you’ll go into Garrison’s blog with a good overview of what Garrison herself endured — and more importantly, why.

Joyce writes: “The experience of Garrison’s friend Laura — a mother of 11 who collapsed under the demands of the lifestyle — also helps explain why many unhappy women are afraid to turn their backs on the movement, when they’ll be left with scant financial resources, years without work experience, and a dearth of references from a community that often shuns them.” Which has all the earmaks of any cult: Isolate the victim, destroy her independence, and hold the threat of ostracization over her head.

(Which always makes me think of Mormonism. I’m not just getting in a jab at the Mormons here, honest, but: Consider the vast “support” network the Mormons have set up solely for the care and feeding of one another — right down to silos full of food to be distributed in case of Armageddon — and then consider the fate of Mormons who are excommunicated or leave the church voluntarily; they are often completely cut off, and may as well be dead, even to their own families. And Mormons wonder why so many, especially Christians, consider their church a cult? Such Mafia-like intimidation tactics — once you’re in the family, you can never leave — under the mask of Us Against the World, is but one warning sign of a cult.)

While Garrison’s blog, which she writes in tandem with her friend Laura, who is undergoing a similar — and in some ways, much more difficult — journey (Laura’s ex-husband wrenched custody of all eleven of their children from her), is only a little more than a month old, there is much material to absorb, and there is a natural chronology to it. So I would suggest reading the introductory links under “What It’s All About” (in the righthand menu), and then navigating your way back to the women’s first posts (Laura: “Part 1 ~ In The Beginning”; Vyckie: “Part 1 ~ Married At 16″), and proceeding from there.

Even if you have no interest in “biblical patriarchy” to begin with, I assure you that you will after you’ve read a few posts (and the many comments). You may never come to truly understand this mindset (I doubt I ever will), much less relate to it (I know I never will), but you will come away with a few more pieces to the puzzle that stymies those of us who cannot imagine life without having, and fighting to maintain, our freedom, our dignity, and our very personhood.

And, while this may sound flip (as I’ve really been ragging on her this week) you will actually come to understand Maggie Gallagher… and Phyllis Schlafly, and all the others like them. There’s really no difference among them at all.

The only danger: You may come to pity them.

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December 30, 2008

“A very valuable lesson about the separation of church and state”

rAmen to this LTTE from Washington state:

State capitol made a bad choice

First, a statue of Jesus. Then, an anti-religious solstice sign. And now, we might have a display honoring the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a sign from Kansas bigot Fred Phelps that Santa will send you to hell, and a display for Festivus, a joke holiday.

It’s a joke all right. Gov. Chris Gregoire and the Department of General Administration have learned a very valuable lesson about the separation of church and state, courtesy of the gutsy Freedom From Religion Foundation. The state had the option of either keeping our government property free of religious displays or allowing every display under the sun and turning our state Capitol building into a circus. Our state government has now learned that it made the wrong choice.

I can only hope that other state and local governments across the country, having witnessed this embarrassment on national TV, will vicariously learn the same lesson.

Moral of the story: If you want to look at a plastic baby Jesus, read about the winter solstice, dance around a Festivus Pole or raise a noodle to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you can do so in the comfort of your home and/or your local house of worship. Thus, you can celebrate your holiday as you wish, and no one has to look at nonsense in the Capitol. A win-win for all, and for all a goodnight.

Matthew J. Barry
Issaquah

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December 24, 2008

Because Our Much-Loved Atheist Friends and Family Deserve Something Extra-Special Today

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December 20, 2008

In Which Sapph Happily Lies About Being a Completely Godless Heathen Just to Ditch Some Completely Braindead Door-to-Door Christians

A real-life illustration of my own wonderment at 1) how dense some people can be, and 2) the idea that there are people even denser (or so lonely) that they give idiots like this the time of day. It also illustrates a test of my pacifism, which I think I passed with flying colors, as I’d much rather have thrown them bodily off my property:

One male and one female, they’re very young, probably not even in their twenties, dressed to the nines, and they’ve already scored one negative point as they interrupt me while I’m unloading groceries from the trunk of the car.

They wait until I’m in the house, between loads (obviously; I mean, they walk right by the car, with the trunk open, full of stuff), then ring the doorbell. (You think they offer to give me a hand? Of course not.)

She asks if I want to help them with “a short survey.”

My guard down, I reply: “If all you’re doing is taking a survey and not asking for money, OK.”

She hands me a small piece of paper and continues talking, but my attention is on the list of half a dozen questions. That speed-reading course I took in high school allows me to skim and pull the only information I need:

“Do you believe…”

“…child abuse … domestic violence … problem in this country?”

“…that a lack of spirituality in our world contributes to…”

At the very bottom, evidence that the genius at my door was supposed to ask these questions, and not just hand the mark the paper; there are actual stage directions:

I can feel the smirk on my face I know I won’t be able to wipe off.

Shaking my head, I interrupt her and hand her back the paper.

“No, no, no, no, no,” I say, sounding to myself very much like Mr. Grainger in the episode of “Are You Being Served?” where the old man is made temporary supervisor of the department, and, indelible smirk on face and cigar in teeth, turns down every request in the most condescending manner (“No, no, no, no, no…“).

“But,” I say brightly, “just out of curiosity, what organization do you represent?”

“It’s a general organization,” says the young woman. (I think: Well, she’s been coached on avoiding the actual name of the org, even if “general organization” is pretty lame.)

I channel Mr. Grainger again. “No, no, no… What’s the name of your church?“

She stumbles for a moment, then says something about “Youth in Christ.” (To be fair, I’m having a little difficulty understanding her English.) Then she explains that their goal is to spread the Word of Jesus everywhere, all over the world — “to introduce people to Jesus.”

I’ve gone from Mr. Grainger to Winston Churchill now, and utter a snicker I can’t restrain.

“I’ve been introduced to Jesus, thanks.”

Blank looks. I try again.

“I wish you the best of luck in introducing Jesus to everyone, but you’ve got the wrong house.”

Blank stares again. Are these people completely braindead?

One more try:

“I’m an ex-Catholic, so I know all about what you’re selling.”

You guessed it; you could have tattooed “DUH!” on their foreheads, and they wouldn’t have blinked.

I pull out the big guns.

“I’m an ATHEIST. I don’t believe in your god, or any god. Oh, and I’m a lesbian who’s really pissed off about Proposition 8. Now, goodbye.”

Then I shut the door, wait for them to go away (which takes another ten seconds of them standing there like somebody just yanked the gray matter out of their skulls through their nostrils with a buttonhook), and finish unloading the groceries.

The next step, I assure you, would have been some talk about sacrificing animals and drinking babies’ blood.

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November 18, 2008

Rabbi Shmuley Has Something to Say Re: Teh Gay

You know Rabbi Shmuley Boteach — this year’s Oprah fave, who brings “Shalom in the Home” to married heterosexual couples on the brink of divorce.

In this op/ed, Rabbi Boteach takes a dim view of “atheists [who] make a financial killing by portraying religious people as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who swallow faith uncritically and send their money to charlatan televangelists who fly around in their gas-guzzling G5s” (well, of course he does; he’s “religious people”) — but then explains why religionists are portrayed as “knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who swallow faith uncritically and send their money to charlatan televangelists who fly around in their gas-guzzling G5s”:

Gays as the new religious bogeymen

. . .

Indeed, great defenders of the faith would be forgiven if they were to conclude that in America, religion is losing its focus as well as its rational dimension.

Take the American religious obsession with homosexuals. Last week, This World: The Jewish Values Network, which I founded, hosted a debate between a leading evangelical scholar and myself on whether Judaism and Christianity are religions of peace. My opponent, a man of great learning and even greater decency, made it clear that in stating “Love your enemies,” Jesus included Osama bin Laden. Yet, when it came to gay men who want to get married, he seemed to concur that were this to happen the whole of American society would begin to unweave. Indeed, I have heard some of my evangelical brethren make it sound as if gays were a greater danger to America than terrorists.

I will not get into the arguments for and against gay marriage in this column. What I will say is that religion in America has made homosexuality into a false bogeyman, which has seriously distracted religion from giving real values to an increasingly valueless society. Is this really what religious values in America has come to, opposition to gay marriage?

What do you think would do more to save heterosexual marriage in America? Making sure gays can’t get hitched, or making marital counseling among heterosexual couples tax-deductible so that couples can afford the help they need? What should religion be devoting its energy to? Opposing gay marriage in California, or supporting an effective national campaign for school vouchers so that parents can afford to send their children to schools that teach religious values like male respect for women and the sanctity of a loving relationship?

Oh… G-d! You know how I feel about school vouchers: They’re the kudzu undermining the U.S. public school system, and just another excuse to force secular taxpayers like me to pay for the religious “education” of children who are then taught that people like me are the spawn of Satan. (And the good Rabbi doesn’t seem to understand that these “faith-based” vouchers fund the same teaching that “unconverted” Jews are going to roast in Hell right alongside us ‘mos — after the compulsory bloodbath, of course.)

Nevertheless…

I have devoted my entire life to saving marriage. I have counseled thousands of couples in crisis. I have authored 20 books on spirituality and relationships. Never once have I believed that by opposing homosexuality I was bringing a husband and wife closer together. Rather, by seeking to increase the desire between husband and wife and by fostering true emotional intimacy between them, I was working to ensure that fewer American children would end up like me, the product of a broken home. Homosexuality is nothing but a distraction.

America has serious social problems. Fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce. Forty million married Americans are in platonic marriages. One out of three American women is on an anti-depressant. Innumerable men are deeply into pornography. Our teenagers have unacceptably high rates of sexuality and pregnancy. And yet, I cannot name a single religious initiative that appeared on a single ballot to combat any of these problems, save for Proposition 8 in California that sought to ban gay marriage.

Let’s be honest. Gays don’t have to kill off heterosexual marriage. We straight people have done a fine job already.

What religion suffers from, not just in our time but for all time, is its dualistic impulse. Simply stated, religion seems to need enemies. Many religious people thrive on an “us and them” mentality. The Godly and the godless. The righteous and the sinful. The forces of light battling the forces of darkness. …

The future of religion in America and abroad is one in which religion finds the good in others even as it maintains its standards and morals. Pastors may oppose gay marriage. But given the limited resources available to religion and the social rot that is all around us, can we not dedicate those resources to ends that unite and inspire instead of divide and alienate? …

An ancient Jewish legend says that when the whole world keeps just one Sabbath, the Messiah will come. For our time perhaps this means that when religion chooses to give the world something that unites rather than divides, redemption will finally come.

Rabbi Boteach’s take may not be your cup of tea (it’s certainly not mine), but (to mix metaphors) he slam-dunks a point I know that I, a happily religion-less agnostic, could never drive home with the same authority.

That is:

Couldn’t you (fanatical religionists) be doing something better with your time and money than attacking a made-up bogeyman who never posed any threat to you in the first place?

By the way: One thing that ups the Rabbi’s authority in my shamelessly heathen estimation is that he hits on something I keep repeating (but I think few people are grasping):

“Simply stated, religion seems to need enemies. Many religious people thrive on an ‘us and them’ mentality. The Godly and the godless. The righteous and the sinful. The forces of light battling the forces of darkness.”

And, to expand on that point: Today, it’s Teh Gays — tomorrow, it may be you.

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November 14, 2008

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Mormon Homophobia, By the Grandson of Ezra Taft Benson

“Gays and lesbians fight for human justice in refusing to tolerate inhuman sexual abuse from the Mormon Church. Mormon leaders may think they were born to command, but those who wish to live their own lives were born to countermand. One can try to be polite to them — but being polite to a bully still gets one a bloody nose.”

This is a must-read.

In 2002, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Steve Benson, grandson of Ezra Taft Benson, 13th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gave two talks to gay Mormons and ex-Mormons. In this combined version of his remarks, he reveals what’s really behind the maniacal homophobia of the LDS church and its longstanding commitment to injecting Mormon doctrine into civil law, and why Mormons themselves follow every edict of LDS, Inc., like braindead zombies.

Benson also describes his long journey from Mormon-indoctrinated homophobe (”a Pat Buchanan wannabe, I drew a lot of incredibly stupid, rawly-prejudiced and hysterically anti-gay cartoons”) to atheist and true friend and ally to LGBTs, stopping along the way to paint a picture of his most dysfunctional childhood, and taking us through his painfully awkward wedding night (he’s straight) and honeymoon — which was disturbed by family members (including old Ezra) knocking on the newlyweds’ cabin door while they were trying to fulfill their charge to populate the earth with more Mormons.

This is an extremely long read, but fascinating, entertaining, heartbreaking, and uplifting all at the same time, and most enlightening for those of us who can’t quite grasp why the Mormons are so hellbent on singling out and persecuting gay men and lesbians — and what we might do about it.

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September 21, 2008

Sam Harris Nails Sarah Palin (Figuratively Speaking)

Well, well worth the click and the full read — except for the snotty title some obviously biased editor at Newsweek gave it (”When Atheists Attack: A noted provocateur rips Sarah Palin—and defends elitism”):

… If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could. …

The point to be lamented … is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her. …

We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter’s microphone, saying things like, “I’m voting for Sarah because she’s a mom. She knows what it’s like to be a mom.” … The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security … the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them. …

I care even more about the many things Palin thinks she knows but doesn’t: like her conviction that the Biblical God consciously directs world events. Needless to say, she shares this belief with millions of Americans—but we shouldn’t be eager to give these people our nuclear codes, either. There is no question that if President McCain chokes on a spare rib and Palin becomes the first woman president, she and her supporters will believe that God, in all his majesty and wisdom, has brought it to pass. …

Given her long affiliation with the Assemblies of God church, Palin very likely believes that Biblical prophecy is an infallible guide to future events and that we are living in the “end times.” Which is to say she very likely thinks that human history will soon unravel in a foreordained cataclysm of war and bad weather. Undoubtedly Palin believes that this will be a good thing—as all true Christians will be lifted bodily into the sky to make merry with Jesus, while all nonbelievers, Jews, Methodists and other rabble will be punished for eternity in a lake of fire. …

In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy “baptism in the Holy Spirit,” “miraculous healings” and “the gift of tongues.” … Palin’s spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of “the final generation,” engaged in “spiritual warfare” to purge the earth of “demonic strongholds.” Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? …

[W]hen Jamie Lynn Spears gets pregnant, it is considered a symptom of liberal decadence and the breakdown of family values; in the case of one of Palin’s daughters, however, teen pregnancy gets reinterpreted as a sign of immaculate, small-town fecundity. And just imagine if, instead of the Palins, the Obama family had a pregnant, underage daughter on display at their convention, flanked by her black boyfriend who “intends” to marry her. Who among conservatives would have resisted the temptation to speak of “the dysfunction in the black community”? …

For all my concern about Bush’s religious beliefs, and about his merely average grasp of terrestrial reality, I have never once thought that he was an over-the-brink, Rapture-ready extremist. Palin seems as though she might be the real McCoy. …

What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents—and her supporters celebrate—the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world’s only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth:

“Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child’s brain?”

“Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I’m an avid hunter.” …

Definitely read the whole thing.

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September 9, 2008

FFRF’s Full Page Ad in Today’s New York Times Imagines a World Free from Religion

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has placed a full-page ad in today’s New York Times (p. A17), featuring a photograph of the intact pre-9/11 Manhattan skyline juxtaposed with the words: “Imagine a World Free From Religion.”

“One of the lessons of 9/11 is that there is no greater source of terrorism, strife, bloodshed, persecution or war than religion,” the Foundation ad points out.

“John Lennon was right,” comments Freedom From Religion Foundation co-president Dan Barker, author of the new book, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists (Ulysses Press).

“If there were no religion,” Dan added, “it would not automatically solve all our problems, but it would make them so much easier to address.”

“In this approaching seventh anniversary of the terror attacks, the role religion plays in creating terrorism and division is that proverbial 800-pound gorilla in the room,” said Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor.

The ad points to “the growing threat of religious fanaticism here at home,” the de facto religious test for public office being imposed on candidates, and asks: “Is the American public flirting with theocracy?,” adding: “Don’t let it happen here!”

The ad promotes membership in the Freedom From Religion Foundation, points out that FFRF is the largest national association of freethinkers, recounts FFRF achievements and touts the Foundation’s significant 30-year history of litigation to keep state and church separate.

“We came into the office today to find the phones ringing off the hooks, and already have been contacted by many very interested prospective members from all over the nation,” said Dan.

“We thank the original East Coast FFRF member who suggested this ad and contributed $10,000, and the other members who contributed toward this national statement,” added Annie Laurie.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., is a national association of more than 12,000 freethinkers (atheists, agnostics) that has been working since 1978 to keep church and state separate.

WASHINGTON — September 9, 2008 — The American Humanist Association congratulated the Freedom From Religion Foundation for its full-page ad in today’s New York Times. The ad’s headline reads “Imagine a World Free From Religion” above a photo of the Twin Towers. “This is a bold stroke to remind people of the elephant in the room,” declared American Humanist Association President Mel Lipman. “People don’t crash airliners into skyscrapers in the name of science or in the name of those common decencies we all believe in. But they can do it when prompted by blind faith in the unseen and unproven.”

This is the anniversary week of 9/11 during which a special memorial will open at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.

“The FFRF has our congratulations for their frankness, honesty and courage in generating discussion on this important issue,” added American Humanist Association Executive Director Roy Speckhardt. “It is efforts like these that have helped more and more people take an honest look at how religious fanaticism can lead to the destruction of humane values.”

In recent years, humanist and freethought groups all over the United States have reported significant growth in their membership numbers, some more than doubling in size. Moreover, public outreach by humanist and freethought organizations has expanded dramatically since the American Humanist Association got the ball rolling with its first national public awareness ad campaign in 2005. This ongoing campaign was highlighted last year when the American Humanist Association ran an ad in the Washington Post congratulating Congressman Pete Stark for “coming out” as a nontheist. Today, humanist and freethought billboards are being placed on major highways in the metropolitan areas of New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Phoenix, as well as in the cities of both the Democratic and Republication national conventions.

“Clearly, the humanist and freethought movement is growing in significance,” concluded Lipman. “Today being nonreligious constitutes the fastest-growing ‘religious’ identification in America, already outnumbering that of Jews, Muslims, Mormons and Hindus combined. That’s why we can now participate on the national stage with dramatic advertising campaigns and programs with broad impact. Expect to see much more from us in the future.”

“And of course, humanism is positioned to offer the next step after people set traditional religious faith aside,” added Speckhardt. “Humanism is more than absence of belief in a deity; it is a positive ethical outlook that gives meaning and purpose to one’s life without need of ancient texts or divine revelation.”

The American Humanist Association (www.americanhumanist.org) advocates for the rights and viewpoints of humanists. Founded in 1941 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., its work is extended through more than 100 local chapters and affiliates across America.

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July 29, 2008

Rabid Religious Righties Brand Church Shooter Atheist Attack Dog. As Usual, the Right is Wrong.

Mere moments after the story broke of hate-filled whackjob Jim David Adkisson barging into a children’s production of Annie inside Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and opening fire on the crowd, CINO (Christian-In-Name-Only) fundamentalists (emphasis on “mental”) everywhere pounced:

Atheist attacks church! See how Christians are persecuted, and murdered by godless heathens! The atheist movement is on the march! It’s the end of the world! …

What, you don’t believe me? Here, see for yourself just a few of the delirious reactions:

A delusional dissonant (notice the anti-humanist, anti-science bent of the recent posts) at something called Recrudescent Religion titles his (her? its?) blog post, “When Atheists Attack,” reasoning (for lack of a better word) that this Adkisson fella couldn’t be a lib’rul-hatin’ right-winger, ‘cuz the paper says he wuz a real nice guy who just turned bad, ‘cuz… well, ‘cuz he was a God-hater, just all the rest of them atheists, like he musta been, dawgawnit:

If you’ve been following the news, you are surely aware of the recent mass-shooting attack at a Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville, Tennesee. If not, then click here to find out. The news media at this stage appear to be trying to spin it as “a right winger attacks a liberal church”, or some such rubbish. However, this is not supported by the actual evidence. …

So, you have a guy who is bitter that his parents “made him go to church all his life”, who rants and raves about the “Bible contradicting itself”, and who becomes inexplicably angry when a neighbour tells him that her daughter just graduated from a Bible college. This sounds suspiciously like the formula we see with so many of the so-called “New Atheists”. Even the fact that he attacked an Unitarian Universalist assembly doesn’t necessarily argue against the notion that he was an angry God-hater. Most God-haters out there are so mixed up they can’t (or simply won’t) make a distinction between far-left groups like the UUs and fundamentalists - anyone smacking of religion draws their ire.

We can probably expect to see more of this sort of thing in this country for as long as the secularist worldview continues to advance in this country. Let’s face it - secularism is no more “rational” than anything else, despite its pretentions. Just as there are always some Muslims who will cross the line into violence because of their religious beliefs, there are secular fundamentalists who will also.

Ignoring the idiotic oxymoron “secular fundamentalist,” if there’s ever been an atheist who ran around shooting at Christians, I can’t name him. Even apart from institutionalized, societally-sanctioned, mass hate crimes instigated and carried out by sworn Christians (e.g., the Salem witch trials, the European Inquisitions, the Holocaust), more murders in which the victim represented a targeted group have been executed by the devoutly religious than by atheists.

Prove me wrong, Tighty Righties. I dare you.

Next, here’s some real Red-under-every-bed lunacy from something called The Delete France News Blog (which was cross-posted on several other right-wing-lunatic blogs, but for reasons not too hard to fathom, has since been scrubbed):

The police are being very quiet about this shooting and the suspect that was caught. I wonder why? Is this due to all of the anti-Religion hate speech coming from “the left” these days? I am not sure if you people noticed that there is a huge atheist movement going on right now. Christianity is being bashed from all angles and it is interesting that this shooter was a stranger to the church, nobody recognized him.

Religion is the thorn in the side to all Marxists that have a Global communism agenda. They feel it must be discredited and destroyed to allow their evil ideology take over.

When a commenter points out that the target was “a left wing, pro-gay Unitarian Church,” the blogger responds:

Well he was obviously further left then the commies running the church

…and later remarks:

13 people were just killed in Turkey, I am sure leftists were behind that one too….I will check that out later

And a hotbed of ignorance (and racism) that calls itself Serr8d’s Cutting Edge concludes, under the title, “Atheist madman kills two in Knoxville Church“:

The FBI was investigating, in case this was a ‘hate crime’. Funny that; all murder is hate. And, Christians aren’t on the leftist’s ‘protected’ list.

In other words, there’s no such thing as a hate crime, unless Christians are the target. Got it.

On a highly reactionary, end-of-times fundy forum called TheologyOnline.com, where the story is posted under the subject line, “Loving Atheist Enters Church and Opens Fire…,” brave dissidents who dared challenge the inevitable conclusion that Adkisson was a Christian-killing atheist were promptly shouted down, and in at least one case, banned.

Of course, posters toeing the poor-little-persecuted-Christians/it’s a sign of the end times! line (while backhanding the UU church) are still active and in good standing; e.g.:

Something tells me that if a man walks into a church and shouts “hateful things” as reported by congregation members before opening fire, he isn’t a Christian. Or it could have been a religious fanatic. It was a Unitarian church after all.

In a back-and-forth between the OP and the banned poster, the OP reacts to the reminder of Killer Christians (by way of witch hunts, the Inquisitions, and anti-Semitism) with nothing more or less than because-I-say-so insistence:

You will know them by their fruits. If anyone does these things, they are not Christian, though they may claim to be.

Finally backed into a corner, the OP blows off the issue with:

So I assumed a religion-hater did it. Is something bad going to happen now?

Hm, let me see… Assigning blame to a member of a specific minority group for a heinous crime, refusing to correct the ASS-umption, and finally equating atheists with “religion-haters”… Yeah, I’d say something bad happened: The OP just spread more lies about atheists and propagated more hatred against atheists.

Some “Christian.”

No matter — that Adkisson sure sounds like a real Christian-hater, doesn’t he?

Uh, no, he doesn’t. Apart from the idea that Unitarian Universalism isn’t your traditional Christian church (I’ll leave it up to UU’s to explain what it is), Jim David Adkisson was no atheist targeting the Lord’s People.

Per Duncan Mansfield:

A four-page letter found in Jim D. Adkisson’s small SUV indicated he intentionally targeted the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church because, the police chief said, “he hated the liberal movement” and was upset with “liberals in general as well as gays.” …

Adkisson was a loner who hates “blacks, gays and anyone different from him,” longtime acquaintance Carol Smallwood of Alice, Texas, told the Knoxville News Sentinel.

So now we know his motive. And the reason he picked TVUU as his target? It’s not lost on anyone that the church (which is welcoming and affirming), had recently erected a sign: “Gays Welcome.”

Bizarrely, Adkisson is “a 58-year-old truck driver on the verge of losing his food stamps” — “It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred for the liberal movement,” said the chief of police — and he blames liberals for his predicament? Liberals, the unyielding promoters and defenders of labor and social welfare programs that made it possible for him to get those food stamps in the first place?

Makes perfect sense… but only to Joe Conservative.

And, as far as Adkisson’s unemployment goes, he can thank the Bush administration and the rest of the “Let them eat… nothing!” Republicans for the abysmal economic climate that’s killing blue-collars joes like himself.

But it sounds like Adkisson drank the Blame-the-Liberals-and-Gays Kool-Aid — gallons of it — and it’s no secret who spiked his glass. Just as Timothy McVeigh was “inspired” to blow up 168 people inside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by the neo-Nazi bible The Turner Diaries, Adkisson appears to have been “inspired” by the non-stop hate speech of such rabid liberal-haters as Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, and Sean Hannity:

Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity
on accused shooter’s reading list

Police found right-wing political books, brass knuckles, empty shotgun shell boxes and a handgun in the Powell home of a man who said he attacked a church in order to kill liberals “who are ruining the country,” court records show. …

Adkisson targeted the church, [Knoxville Police Department Officer Steve Still] wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, “because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets.”

Adkisson told Still that “he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office.” …

Inside the house, officers found “Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder” by radio talk show host Michael Savage, “Let Freedom Ring” by talk show host Sean Hannity, and “The O’Reilly Factor,” by television talk show host Bill O’Reilly. …

Owen said Adkisson specifically targeted the church for its beliefs, rather than a particular member of the congregation.

“It appears that church had received some publicity regarding its liberal stance,” the chief said. The church has a “gays welcome” sign and regularly runs announcements in the News Sentinel about meetings of the Parents, Friends and Family of Lesbians and Gays meetings at the church.

Owen said Adkisson’s stated hatred of the liberal movement was not necessarily connected to any hostility toward Christianity or religion per say, but rather the political advocacy of the church.

The church’s Web site states that it has worked for “desegregation, racial harmony, fair wages, women’s rights and gay rights” since the 1950s. Current ministries involve emergency aid for the needy, school tutoring and support for the homeless, as well as a cafe that provides a gathering place for gay and lesbian high-schoolers. …

What’s more, Dark Christianity — in a well-thought-out post full of excellent research — is mulling over Adkisson’s possible far-right/dominionist links:

There’s been speculation on anti-dominionist forums on LJ that a recent church shooting (at a Unitarian church) may have been the work of a dominionist — unfortunately, this is not unlikely, as UU churches have been explicitly targeted for protests by dominionist groups and the incident occured in Knoxville, located in a part of Tennessee that is a wee bit of a dominionist hotbed. …

I will note at present, as a caveat, that we do *not yet know* what dominionist groups — if any — he was a member of; it should be noted that “Christian Patriot” militia groups and “Joel’s Army” groups *are* rather popular in eastern TN — and this is also an area of the country where there is more overt “Joel’s Army” influence over the Southern Baptist Convention than is apparent in much of the country. Eastern TN, including Knoxville itself, also has one of the decidedly larger concentrations of active Klan groups and Christian Identity groups in the US. There *is* some indication, per articles in Knoxville media (below), that the shooter did tend to have similar viewpoints to Christian Identity and Klan groups — especially in regards to anti-African American and anti-LGBT sentiments. It should also be noted, however, that there are also plenty of *non-dominionist* racist groups; western North Carolina in particular has been noted as a hotbed of not just dominionist-linked racist groups but also groups like neo-Nazis and “Confederate Skins”.

Here’s something that dovetails with that thought, from WBIR’s timeline of the shooting:

A neighbor told 10News Adkisson described himself as a “Confederate” and a “believer in the old South.” She says Adkisson self-identified in this way to her on more than one occasion, but that she didn’t know what he meant by it.

Hmmm.

Back to Dark Christianity:

There *may* be dominionist links, even aside from the obvious — namely, with the damage caused by dominionist coercive groups. Per a report in the Knoxville News-Sentinel, the shooter may have been forced as a child to attend First Christian Church of Harriman, TN; First Christian Church is part of an association of “nondenominational Christian Churches” often linked to dominionism and does have a bibolatrous statement of faith. It also has connections with an explicitly dominionist anti-reproductive-health group that specialises in confrontational protest–including an exhortation to pastors to “put their lives and ministries on the line” (comparing persons who support the right to choose who would personally not have an abortion to Pontius Pilate); it explicitly promotes setting up dominionist steeplejacking of not just culture but the country, at one point, subtly hints that the US is considered a “pagan nation”, and there is also the distinct possibility that the anti-abortion group may be an Assemblies front or closely related due to known links with Assemblies frontgroup Mercy Ministries. The imagery in the church newsletter tends to be telling. There are also reports from relatives he may have had psychological issues as a youth, apparently was adopted as an infant in an arranged adoption, and had longterm harassment even after moving away by his dominionist adoptive parents and ongoing issues related to this; hence there is a real possibility complex PTSD may be a factor in a similar manner to Matthew Murray’s final breakdown.

There is also evidence that the assailant has a long history of violence and threatened violence. At one point this resulted in filing of an EPO by his ex-wife due to threats to shoot himself and his wife; the same ex-spouse has reported he was heavily into conspiracy theories re the government and hated “”blacks, gays, anyone who was a different color or just different from him”. Again, evidence points to complex PTSD as a potential factor. …

Among other things, writings by several neoconservative authors that have expressed sympathy with dominionist viewpoints (including Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly) have been found; among other groups, Media Matters for America has reported on inflammatory speech by these authors. Shows by these writers also tend to get play on dominionist networks, often as the only secular material (for instance, Fox News is the sole secular news provider on the dominionist DSS service Sky Angel). …

Reader dogemperor adds:

[Adkisson] being “force-fed the Bible” has been confirmed per the Knoxville News-Sentinel:
 

According to Massey, Adkisson talked frequently about his parents, who “made him go to church all his life. … He acted like he was forced to do that.”

(I’ve noted the church does appear to have strong dominionist links, and it does appear he was adopted in what may be a private adoption; this is, unfortunately, quite common among dominionist adoptions.)

The rather strong reaction he had with news of a friends’ daughter’s graduation from a college apparently associated with these “independent Christian” churches also points strongly to “multigen walkaway with severe complex PTSD who has likely gotten into racist stuffle to boot”.

Fascinating — especially if you’re familiar with “independent fundamentalist” churches in general (Baptist or otherwise).

Finally — although we disagree, vehemently, on the need for hate-crimes legislation (sorry, but not all violent crimes are hate crimes) — Miscellanea Agnostica sums up the Rabid Righties’ cognitive dissonance best:

Early reports had pointed out that Adkisson complained about Christians, for instance railing against a woman who told him his daughter had attended a Bible college. This fits, of course, with most Christians’ inherent compulsion to feel persecuted, and the story was told according to this angle — until Adkisson’s letter surfaced, showing his motivation to be much more personal and not a philosophically-driven effort to wipe out Christians just because they’re Christians.

So it turns out this was not a “hate crime” against Christians … it was against people of two classes that Adkisson had a personal grudge against.

Folks on the Right were — and possibly still are — railing about this being a “hate crime” because largely they despise the very notion of “hate crime.” They fear that any crime by a Christian against, say, a gay person — regardless of whether or not religion or sexual orientation played a part in the particular event — would have “hate crime” charges tacked on for added measure. Some go further, claiming that all “hate crime” legislation is, by definition, an attempt to “silence” all Christians everywhere. This sort of paranoia is, of course, yet another example of the Christian Martyr Complex, which I already mentioned. While I consider “hate crime” laws to be dubious at best — after all, aren’t all violent crimes “hate” crimes? — this fear is completely irrational.

At any rate, hopefully the Right will stop claiming this crime is an anti-Christian massacre, because truthfully, it wasn’t — and they know it.

But, of course, the professional haters out there will still try to spin it to suit their twisted agenda — like our little leather-obsessed friend, Pete LaBarbera, of Christofascists for Slander and Libel (a.k.a. Americans for Truth) — Petey’s found a way to use this tragedy to 1) denounce hate-crimes legislation, 2) satisfy his lust for the death penalty, 3) slam Out & About as “anti-family,” and 4) accuse “pro-homosexual activists” of doing exactly what he’s doing: politicizing the tragedy.

And all in just two short paragraphs.

(Petey, I think you’ve outdone yourself this time. Whatsamatter, run out of Folsom Street Fair pictures to gaze at?)

Further reading:

Right Wing Blogosphere Completely Ignores Domestic Terrorism In Knoxville
Blue Texan, Firedog Lake, July 28, 2008

In Tennessee, Eliminationism Is No Longer ‘Just A Joke’
David Neiwert, Firedog Lake, July 28, 2008

AFA Approved Comments: Knoxville Church Doing “Satan’s Work”
Jim Burroway, Box Turtle Bulletin, July 28, 2008

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July 23, 2008

AU: Army Base Cannot Coerce Soldier Trainees to Attend Church Services

Watchdog Group Asks US Department of Defense to Investigate Missouri Army Base That Promotes Baptist Church Proselytism

WASHINGTON — July 23 — Americans United for Separation of Church and State today asked the U.S. Department of Defense to investigate an Army base’s practice of coercing soldiers to attend church services during their training.

Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri offers “Free Day Away” as one of only two opportunities for soldiers to leave the base during eight weeks of vigorous Army training. (The other day is the day before graduation, which can be spent with parents and guests.) During “Free Day Away,” trainees are picked up by a bus sent from the Tabernacle Baptist Church of Lebanon, Mo., to participate in a day full of recreational activities, followed by dinner and a required church service.

Trainees are given the impression that the event is sponsored by the Army and that they must attend. If they do not attend, they have to remain on the base and continue with training, while those who attend the event have a break for the day.

“We believe that it is of utmost importance that the Army guarantee the constitutional rights of those who risk their lives to protect our freedom,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. “And that means ensuring that soldiers have the freedom to practice any faith or no faith at all.

“The coercive religious practices at Fort Leonard Wood are an outrage,” he continued, “and the Department of Defense should put a stop to them immediately.”

During the church service, soldiers are told that they are all sinners who must repent and that they “must be saved now or go to hell.” Soldiers willing to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior are instructed to step into the aisles of the church and enroll in a six-lesson correspondence course that will lead to their “personal salvation.”

In a 2003 article in the Global Baptist Times, the pastor of Tabernacle Church reported that 270,000 soldiers had participated in the “Free Day Away” ministry since its inception in 1971 and that 47,000 had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. The Tabernacle Church also asks the soldiers to provide their home addresses so members of their families can also be “saved.”

Fort Leonard Wood has promoted this program for the past 36 years and the program is endorsed by the base commander, Americans United learned during its investigation.

Americans United, in its letter, urged Gordon S. Heddell, acting inspector general for the Department of Defense, to conduct a full investigation into the Army’s “Free Day Away” practice.

The letter was prepared by Americans United Senior Litigation Counsel Alex J. Luchenitser and volunteer attorney Howard Sribnick.
 
Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.

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July 1, 2008

Barack Obama: A Crumb for the Queers, and Blood-Red Meat for the Fundies (Or: Is it already time for another “I told you so” post?)

Flash! Obama Still Doesn’t Think We’re As Equal As He Is!

Also: Generalissimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead!

I suppose a few Obama supporters might think it’s time to deliver an “I told you so” to me, given that their guy has come out against California’s Proposition 8, in a letter to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club:

Dear Friends,

Thank you for the opportunity to welcome everyone to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club’s Pride Breakfast and to congratulate you on continuing a legacy of success, stretching back thirty-six years. As one of the oldest and most influential LGBT organizations in the country, you have continually rallied to support Democratic candidates and causes, and have fought tirelessly to secure equal rights and opportunities for LGBT Americans in California and throughout the country.

As the Democratic nominee for President, I am proud to join with and support the LGBT community in an effort to set our nation on a course that recognizes LGBT Americans with full equality under the law. That is why I support extending fully equal rights and benefits to same sex couples under both state and federal law. That is why I support repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, and the passage of laws to protect LGBT Americans from hate crimes and employment discrimination. And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states.

For too long. issues of LGBT rights have been exploited by those seeking to divide us. It’s time to move beyond polarization and live up to our founding promise of equality by treating all our citizens with dignity and respect. This is no less than a core issue about who we are as Democrats and as Americans.

Finally, I want to congratulate all of you who have shown your love for each other by getting married these last few weeks. My thanks again to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club for allowing me to be a part of today’s celebration. I look forward to working with you in the coming months and years, and I wish you all continued success.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

Mmm… nope, sorry. FAIL.

Obama does not support “full equality under the law” or “extending fully equal rights and benefits.” He opposes same-sex marriage, period.

This sentence alone…

And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states.

…is absolutely meaningless light of Obama’s continued insistence that marriage is an institution reserved solely for one man and one woman, and that “the states” should be allowed to vote on the rights of a minority. (Just like your parents’ interracial marriage was left to the states, eh, Barack?)

How do you suppose Obama might vote if he were a Californian? (Probably “present,” but that’s beside the point.)

Sorry, not buying it. He’s pandering for votes — and while it’s refreshing to see him pandering to us for a change (take a picture of it; it won’t last long), his words are empty.

And notice he didn’t make this statement in a speech, at a press conference, or to a major media outlet. I know who the Alice B. Toklas folks are, and maybe you do too — but it’s highly doubtful anyone without a deep interest in LGBT history and politics knows, or will hear this message.

Hell, I wonder if Barry even knows who Alice B. Toklas was, or why a gay political organization named itself after her.

Of course, Obama keeps citing his Christianity as the reason he opposes marriage equality — and I’ve long denounced his continuous chipping away at the wall of separation between church and state. Which brings me to the real reason for another “I told you so” post:

Obama Wants to Expand Bush’s Faith-Based Program

Now, you know I’m no fan of Obama’s — the guy manages to piss me off nearly every day — but this actually made my jaw drop:

Here’s the full text of Obama’s remarks, “as prepared for delivery” in Zanesville, Ohio (with my reaction, of course!):

You know, faith based groups like East Side Community Ministry carry a particular meaning for me. Because in a way, they’re what led me into public service. It was a Catholic group called The Campaign for Human Development that helped fund the work I did many years ago in Chicago to help lift up neighborhoods that were devastated by the closure of a local steel plant.

Now, I didn’t grow up in a particularly religious household. But my experience in Chicago showed me how faith and values could be an anchor in my life. And in time, I came to see my faith as being both a personal commitment to Christ and a commitment to my community; that while I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I went out and did the Lord’s work.

You’ve said that before, Barry — and I’ll say this again: I don’t want a president who thinks he’s doing “the Lord’s work” — I want a president who going to do the people’s work.

The last president who thought he was fulfilling some sort of godly “calling” was… Oh, dear, that guy is still in the White House, isn’t he?

I know this kind of “Lord’s work” talk goes over just dandy with all those evangelicals you’re pandering to, Barry, but I wonder how well it would go over if you were Buddhist, or Hindu, or Muslim?

Probably about as well as it goes over with me right now.

There are millions of Americans who share a similar view of their faith, who feel they have an obligation to help others. And they’re making a difference in communities all across this country – through initiatives like Ready4Work, which is helping ensure that ex-offenders don’t return to a life of crime; or Catholic Charities, which is feeding the hungry and making sure we don’t have homeless veterans sleeping on the streets of Chicago; or the good work that’s being done by a coalition of religious groups to rebuild New Orleans.

Catholic Charities? Man, did you pick a bad example, Barry. I bet you weren’t thinking about Catholic Charities’ decision in 2006 to “end its adoption work, deciding to abandon its founding mission, rather than comply with [Massachusetts] state law requiring that gays be allowed to adopt children.”

So, what are you going to do about Catholic Charities, Barry? Give them a pass, because, technically, they’re not discriminating against anybody anymore? (Golly gee, that’s just like those California county clerks who decided to stop performing marriages altogether, rather than comply with state law to marry same-sex couples, innit?)

And if that doesn’t grab you, Barry (after all, we gay folk just too marginal to really care about), are you going to withhold funding to a “faith-based” organization that, oh, let’s say, refuses to provide its employees with health insurance coverage or disability insurance coverage that includes birth control among prescription drug benefits, in violation of state law, because “the use of contraception is extrinsically evil and a grave sin”? How about a “faith-based” organization that files suit against the state, demanding an exemption under the law?

That was Catholic Charities in 2001, Barry. (They lost the suit, by the way, in 2004. Ironically, it appears it was Catholic Charities’ own argument that CC is “a California public benefit corporation that provides social services to the poor, disabled, elderly, and otherwise vulnerable members of society, regardless of their religious beliefs” worked against them; the California Supreme Court said, essentially, “OK, so if you employ and serve people of all faiths, and you don’t try to convert them to Catholicism, then you’re not a religious organization, so you’re not exempt.”)

You see, while these groups are often made up of folks who’ve come together around a common faith, they’re usually working to help people of all faiths or of no faith at all. And they’re particularly well-placed to offer help. As I’ve said many times, I believe that change comes not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up, and few are closer to the people than our churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques.

That’s why Washington needs to draw on them. The fact is, the challenges we face today — from saving our planet to ending poverty — are simply too big for government to solve alone. We need all hands on deck.

So, instead of fixing government-operated, secular social programs, you want to continue to pass responsibility off onto somebody else. And give somebody else money to do what the government should be doing. Even if that somebody else is — oh, let’s say, actively working against my equal rights.

Like the Salvation Army. Aside from their long, ugly history of anti-gay political action, how are you going to explain that the federal government is giving money to a “faith-based” organization which in turn hires high-powered lobbyists (for a reported $25,000 per month) like “Stephen M. Minikes, a member of the Bush election campaign’s ‘Pioneers’ — those who raised at least $100,000 apiece for the Republican candidate — and Mark Holman, former chief of staff to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge and a longtime personal friend of Bush political counselor Karl Rove”?

Or the Boy Scouts of America. Are you going to supplement what the BSA has lost from private donors over its rabidly anti-gay and anti-atheist policies? (By the way, Barry, as POTUS, you’ll automatically become the honorary president of BSA. Are you going to endorse the BSA’s long history of active homophobia and staunch opposition to freedom from religion?)

*snapping fingers* Oh, wait! I know how you’re going to justify federally-funded homophobia:

“In answer to a reporter’s question, Obama said federal anti-discrimination laws do not cover discrimination based on sexual orientation. But Obama said he believes local laws in some states prohibiting discrimination against gays would apply to faith-based social programs funded with federal money in those states.”

Ducking for cover behind the absence of a fully inclusive federal antidiscrimination law?! And one that you purport to support? Good God, Barry! Shameless Hypocrite of the Year!

I’m not saying that faith-based groups are an alternative to government or secular nonprofits.

Yes, you are.

And I’m not saying that they’re somehow better at lifting people up.

Right — they’re not.

What I’m saying is that we all have to work together — Christian and Jew, Hindu and Muslim; believer and non-believer alike — to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

And how are you going to do that by giving my tax dollars to “faith-based” organizations that discriminate against me? That’s not a very good way to convince me to work with them — forcing me to make an involuntary donation that will in turn be used against me — is it, Barry?

Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square.

Uh-huh. And we already know what you think, Barry:

“But what I am suggesting is this — secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King — indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history — were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

You can be “motivated by faith” all you like — but when you start “injecting” your religious beliefs into secular law that will impact me, then you are wrong.

And you really piss me off, Barry, the way you keep insisting that “personal morality” is solely the domain of the religious. The most moral people I’ve ever known have been atheists: They do what’s right because it’s right, and not out of fear that somebody else’s big, mean god is going to boil them in oil for eternity.

When a person is good because it’s right to be good, and for no other reason, that is true morality.

And (with a tip of the hat to Muhammad Ali), I ain’t got no quarrel with atheism — no atheist ever called me a diseased, “intrinsically evil” destroyer of society.

But the fact is, leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith-based groups.

They sure have. And that value is measured in dollars in exchange for votes.

President Clinton signed legislation that opened the door for faith-based groups to play a role in a number of areas, including helping people move from welfare to work. Al Gore proposed a partnership between Washington and faith-based groups to provide more support for the least of these.

I hope they’ve both learned from their mistakes.

And President Bush came into office with a promise to “rally the armies of compassion,” establishing a new Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Ah, I was wondering when you’d get around to praising Bush.

So how’s that “compassionate conservatism” been workin’ out, Barry?

But what we saw instead was that the Office never fulfilled its promise. Support for social services to the poor and the needy have been consistently underfunded.

That’s your complaint? That they’re underfunded? Not that these “faith-based” organizations are subsidized at all as they continue to exercise blatantly discriminatory practices? And you want to give them more of my money?

Rather than promoting the cause of all faith-based organizations, former officials in the Office have described how it was used to promote partisan interests.

And, as I asked above, what are you going to do about it? I don’t think you have a clue about what you’re saying, Barry, given that you cited Catholic Charities as a shining beacon of the sort of “services” you’re pushing.

As a result, the smaller congregations and community groups that were supposed to be empowered ended up getting short-changed.

Which ones? The ones that don’t have the muscle to hire high-priced Washington lobbyists?

Well, I still believe it’s a good idea to have a partnership between the White House and grassroots groups, both faith-based and secular. But it has to be a real partnership — not a photo-op. That’s what it will be when I’m President. I’ll establish a new Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The new name will reflect a new commitment. This Council will not just be another name on the White House organization chart — it will be a critical part of my administration.

Oh, man. You didn’t say that. You didn’t. A “critical part” of your administration? Now you’re scaring me, Barry. Scaring me bad.

Now, make no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state…

Oh, bull-oney! You believe deeply in knocking down the wall between church and state. Who are you lying to, Barry? Us, or yourself?

…but I don’t believe this partnership will endanger that idea — so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them — or against the people you hire — on the basis of their religion.

Catholic Charities doesn’t proselytize, discriminate against the people they help, or refuse to hire non-Catholics. Yet they don’t deserve one thin dime of my tax dollars.

Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs.

That’s how these organizations skirt the rules now, Barry — by claiming to spend all their federal funding on secular programs.

Don’t try to convince me that none of them cooks the books.

And we’ll also ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work.

The Salvation Army’s social programs “work.” And they don’t deserve a penny from me, either.

With these principles as a guide, my Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will strengthen faith-based groups by making sure they know the opportunities open to them to build on their good works. Too often, faith-based groups — especially smaller congregations and those that aren’t well connected — don’t know how to apply for federal dollars, or how to navigate a government website to see what grants are available, or how to comply with federal laws and regulations. We rely too much on conferences in Washington, instead of getting technical assistance to the people who need it on the ground. What this means is that what’s stopping many faith-based groups from helping struggling families is simply a lack of knowledge about how the system works.

So you’re going to bring more anti-gay, anti-atheist, anti-et cetera groups into your “big tent.” Oy.

And another thing: Where do you plan to get the money to fund all these “new” organizations you predict will be applying for federal funding? Are you going to raise taxes? Or just divert funds from somewhere else? Mark Chaves noted in 2003 that, “for example, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs cut the budget of a large, secular homeless shelter run by the United Veterans of America, while awarding grants to many religiously run shelters. Critics noted that applicants were asked to check a box if they were faith-based. According to a January 13 article in the Boston Globe, Veterans Affairs officials not only encouraged religious groups to apply, ‘but told them their religious roots would help.’”

Is that how you plan to feed the “faith-based”, Barry?

Well, that will change when I’m President. I will empower the nonprofit religious and community groups that do understand how this process works to train the thousands of groups that don’t. We’ll “train the trainers” by giving larger faith-based partners like Catholic Charities…

There you go again with Catholic Charities. Bad choice.

…and Lutheran Services…

You mean Lutheran Social Services? Hmmm…

“The March 2006 issue of Freethought Today reports on an audit of Wisconsin’s funding of Lutheran Social Services to help abused and neglected children:

“‘Egregiously, more than $16,000 in church-related expenditures Lutheran Social Services were paid by child welfare money. “Church-related” expenses included tickets to three Milwaukee Brewer baseball games, two of which were for clergy. The cost for the food, tickets, and suite totaled $1,210, according to auditors. […]’

“‘Lutheran Social Services spent more than $5,550 of child welfare money to purchase fleece jackets, shirts, watches, key lights and sweatshirts for employees. Public money also bought 200 coffee mugs with Lutheran Social Services logo for child welfare trainees.’

“This isn’t even everything — Lutheran Social Services also used public funds for things like legal bills unrelated to the mission of child welfare as well as grocery store gift cards. What did the government and the children get in exchange for all this?

“‘The audit found 30% of child abuse investigations took longer than the 60 days permitted by state law. Only 27% of court-ordered services for children in foster care and their families were in place shortly after children were removed from homes during the period of mid-February through late June 2005.’”

Hmmm.

…and secular nonprofits like Public/Private Ventures the support they need to help other groups build and run effective programs. Every house of worship that wants to run an effective program and that’s willing to abide by our constitution — from the largest mega-churches and synagogues to the smallest store-front churches and mosques — can and will have access to the information and support they need to run that program.

This Council will also help target our efforts to meet key challenges like education.

Well, this certainly dovetails nicely with another of your recent pro-Bush positions, Barry: your support of school vouchers. Again, you’re not fixing the government — you’re shifting responsibility to the private sector. How do you sleep at night, with all your plans to gut the public sector (and in this case further weaken the public school system)?

All across America, too many children simply can’t read or perform math at their grade-level, a problem that grows worse for low-income students during the summer months and afterschool hours. Nonprofits like Children’s Defense Fund are working to solve this problem. They hold summer and afterschool Freedom Schools in communities across this country, and many of their classes are held in churches.

That’s fine — and the CDF is a fine organization. The funny thing is, the CDF doesn’t take any government funding — so, like… what? You’re going to make them take it? Do they want it? Or are you just namedropping?

There’s a lot of evidence that these kinds of partnerships work. Take Youth Education for Tomorrow, an innovative program that’s being run by churches, faith-based schools, and others in Philadelphia. To help narrow the summer learning gap, the YET program hires qualified teachers who help students with reading using proven learning techniques. They hold classes four days a week after school and during the summer. And they monitor progress closely. The results have been outstanding. Children who attended a YET center for at least six months improved nearly 2 years in reading ability. And the average high school student gained a full grade in reading level after just three months.

That’s the kind of real progress that can be made when we empower faith-based organizations.

You just named two “faith-based” organization that are doing some real good. (The Children’s Defense Fund isn’t a “faith-based” organization.)

And the organizations you just cited are anomalies. As Mark Chaves wrote in 2001: “The intensity of congregational involvement in social services varies greatly. Regarding food programs, for example, congregations may donate money to a community food bank, supply volunteers for a Meals on Wheels project, organize a food drive every Thanksgiving, or operate independent food pantries or soup kitchens. When it comes to housing, congregations may provide volunteers to do occasional home repair for the needy, assist first-time home buyers with funds, participate in neighborhood redevelopment efforts, or build affordable housing for senior citizens. When serving the homeless, congregations might donate money to a neighborhood shelter, provide volunteers to prepare dinner at a shelter, or actually provide shelter for homeless women and children in the congregation’s own building.

“Most congregations engage in some social service of this kind, but only a tiny minority actively and intensively engage in such activity. Only 6 percent of congregations have a staff person devoting at least quarter time to social service projects. The median dollar amount spent by congregations directly in support of social service programs is about $1,200, which is about 3 percent of the median congregation’s total budget. In the median congregation, only ten individuals do volunteer work connected with congregational social services. Some congregations intensively engage in social service activity and constitute important social service institutions in their communities, but those congregations are the exception rather than the rule.”

And that’s why as President, I’ll expand summer programs like this to serve one million students. This won’t just help our children learn, it will help keep them off the streets during the summer so they don’t turn to crime.

And my Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will also have a broader role — it will help set our national agenda. Because if we are going to do something about the injustice of millions of children living in extreme poverty, we need interfaith coalitions like the Let Justice Roll campaign standing up for the powerless. If we’re going to end genocide and stop the scourge of HIV/AIDS, we need people of faith on Capitol Hill talking about how these challenges don’t just represent a security crisis or a humanitarian crisis, but a moral crisis as well.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! “Moral crisis” in the same breath as “the scourge of HIV/AIDS”? I don’t like your silent dog whistle there, Barry.

We know that faith and values can be a source of strength in our own lives.

Maybe your life, Barry. And wouldja quit co-opting “values” as if “values” were exclusive to the religious? In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s what the Radical Right does.

That’s what it’s been to me.

That’s what I just said. So stop projecting your worldview onto mine.

And that’s what it is to so many Americans. But it can also be something more. It can be the foundation of a new project of American renewal. And that’s the kind of effort I intend to lead as President of the United States.

Oh… God.

All I can say is: Republicans saddened by George W. Bush’s dwindling days in office can cheer up; if all goes to plan, you’ll have a Mini-Bush back in the White House next January: Barack Obama.

Further reading:

Six Myths About Faith-Based Initiatives
Mark Chaves, The Christian Century, September 12-19, 2001

Debunking Charitable Choice
Mark Chaves, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Summer 2003

Moonies knee-deep in faith-based funds: Pushing celibacy, marriage counseling under Bush plan
Don Lattin, San Francisco Chronicle, October 3, 2004

Government-Funded Religious Discrimination in Head Start Programs
People For the American Way, September 19, 2005

Welcome to Faith-Based America
Stephen Pizzo, News for Real, October 22, 2005

Non-Christians need not apply
Robyn E. Blumner, St. Petersburg Times, August 13, 2006

Bush’s faith-based initiative gets embrace from Obama
Johanna Neuman, Los Angeles Times, July 1, 2008

Obama Support For Expansion Of ‘Faith-Based’ Program Is Disappointing, Says Americans United
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, July 1, 2008

Expanding federal faith-based initiatives is unwise
Religious Right Watch, July 1, 2008

Yet Another Connection…
Rabble Rouser Reverend Amy, No Quarter, July 1, 2008

Obama Wants to Expand Role of Religious Groups
Jeff Zeleny and Brian Knowlton, New York Times, July 2, 2008

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June 25, 2008

James Dobson’s Attack on Barack Obama: Transcript and Rebuttal (Or: Never Let It Be Said We Never Defended Barack Obama)

Freedom Writer

The short version: Anti-gay crusader and all-around unlikable Radical Righty James Dobson accused Barack Obama of deliberately distorting the Bible, and of having a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Constitution.

We accuse James Dobson of being a rabid wingnut, and devoid of any sense of irony whatsoever, since he’s the one with the “fruitcake interpretation” (and we mean “fruitcake” as Dobson does: in the raving-lunatic kind of way).

First, here’s what has me laughing: Dobson’s panties are in a twist over Obama’s 2006 “Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America” keynote address. Back in January of this year, I came down on Obama for the same speech — but for a very different reason.

When Obama showed way too much love for Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party, and was criticized widely for it, I wrote:

It’s not as if nobody saw this coming — the warnings were there, over and over and over again. Did anyone think the Donnie McClurkin flap was an isolated incident? The easy dismissal of the Baby Boomers? The attack on church-state separatists?

(What “attack on church-state separatists,” you ask? Better you should ask, “Which attack on church-state separatists?” But here’s just one example, from his keynote address at the Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America conference: “At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word ‘Christian’ describes one’s political opponents, not people of faith.” Nice job broadbrushing those of us who believe in Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation” as a bunch of Christian-haters, Obama.)

So, my problem with Obama’s speech is that he was (as usual) sucking up like mad to Christians at the expense of non-Christians — painting non-Christians as intolerant and unreasonable, and expecting non-Christians to resign themselves to accepting the insertion of “religion in the public square.”

But, as you can guess, that’s not Jimmy Dobson’s problem with Obama’s speech.

Now, I’ll make the ultimate sacrifice and actually listen to Dobson’s latest insane rant, so you don’t have to (and so you can have a transcript — which you are welcome to reprint in part or full, on the condition you include a link back to The Lavender Newswire). You’re welcome.

After some crappy intro music, endless reminiscing about Tim Russert, some yammering about 13-year-old girls getting abortions, general slams at Democrats, and the dire warning that Republicans are in danger of losing the November election unless they start “articulating more conservative values” (how much more? would advocating public hanging, stoning, and flogging for heretics be enough?), Dobson and Focus on the Family’s “vice president of government and public policies” Tom Minnery finally get down to Obama — but not before Dobson makes a disclaimer about how they can talk about Obama all they want, because the program is being sponsored solely by whatever arm of Focus on the Family it is that doesn’t have to adhere to IRS regulations.

Dobson: “I show up in that speech. I never knew that I had come under fire there, and, uh, I think that’s a good place, Tom, to start our discussion here, because this speech is about Barack Obama’s views on religion and government, and it is very telling.”

Minnery: “… And before he diminshes you, Dr. Dobson, on the subject of religion, he diminishes religion itself…”

Obama: “90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution.”

Minnery: “Notice he said 70 percent of the people identify with an organized religion. That organized religion they identify with is the Christian religion, the Judeo-Christian tradition. Now, he allows that 38 percent are identified as committed Christians, but that’s a smaller number than the entire body of people who identify as Judeo-Christians, so he’s not even acknowledging the strong Judeo-Christian tradition.”

So, because he does acknowledge non-Christians, he’s dissing Christians? Oh, get off that cross, Minnery — we need the nails.

Beyond that, Minnery, are you implying that because Christians are in the majority, they should be allowed to run the country without concern for non-Christians? Actually, I’m sure that’s exactly what you mean.

Another gay-hater had this to say:

“Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).”

Minnery: “Then, he— later in the speech, he says: ‘Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.’

“Well I say, ‘Excuuuse me?’ 76 percent of the people identify themselves as Christians. There are only six-tenths of one percent who are Muslim, seven-tenths of one percent who are Buddhist, four-tenths of one percent who are Hindu…”

Uh-huh. And you have a problem with this why, exactly?

Not that I would ever compare Barack Obama to Thomas Jefferson, but it’s worth noting that Obama’s statement here is hardly a new idea:

“Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it should read ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.’ The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.”

— Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821
on the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

You got a problem with Thomas Jefferson, Mr. Minnery?

Minnery: “So he’s diminishing the idea that people of Christian faith have anything to say. And then he begins to diminish you.”
 

Obama: “And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s?”

Minnery: “Oh, we have to [camp?] on that for just a moment, because he has compared you somehow as being on the right when Al Sharpton is on the left. Al Sharpton achieved his notoriety in the eighties and nineties by engaging in racial bigotry, and many people have called him a black racist, and, uh, he is somehow equating you with that, and racial bigotry.”

Dobson: “Uh, you know, Tom, I don’t, uh, want to be defensive here. Uh, obviously, that is offensive to me. I mean, uh, who wants to expel people who are not Christians? Expel ‘em from what? From the country? Deprive them of Constitutional rights? Is that what he thinks I want to do?

I don’t know what Obama thinks, but I think you do indeed want “to expel people who are not Christians” from every American institution you can, Dobson. You’re the one crowing constantly about “restoring” the United States into the “Christian nation” it never was. You’re the one who belongs to the Coalition on Revival, along with every other whackjob whose primary goal is to turn the United States into a Christian theocracy. You’re the one who trades votes for support of your maniacal crusade against non-believers through the all-powerful Council for National Policy.* You’re the one who wants a conservative Christian-only political party. You’re the one who hijacked the National Day of Prayer, specifically excluding “religions outside of the ‘Judeo-Christian’ tradition” from participation, keeping it “Christians-only spectacle” for the past 17 years.

And there’s no question you want to deny gay people their Constitutional rights, whether we’re Christian or not.

Dobson: “Why this man jump on me? I haven’t said anything near that.

Yes, he said, “Why this man jump on me?” not “Why did this man jump on me?” (For a Ph.D., Dobson takes a lot of liberties with the English language.)

Dobson: “He also equates me with Al Sharpton, who is a reverend. I am not a reverend, I’m not a minister, I’m not a theologian…”

Dobson proceeds down the list of his college degrees. We snore throughout.

Dobson: “…and there is no equivalence to us. I don’t want to overact to it, but…”

Minnery: “Well, you’re in good company, because from there he proceeds to disparage serious understanding of the Bible.”

Obama: “Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount — a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their bibles.” [laughter]

Minnery: “That kind of commentary drives me crazy. It’s almost willful to confuse the dietetic laws of the Old Testament that applied to the Israelites to suggest that the Levitical law governing stoning of a belligerent, drunkard son somehow applies to the church age of the New Testament.”

Dobson agrees; there is some talk on Deuteronomy…

Minnery: “The Lord was trying to purify [the Israelites]… trying to create a holy nation… and laws that applied to them then, the Levitical code, the dietary laws, no longer apply. Many of the principles in the Old Testament apply, but not those laws. And it seems that he’s willfully trying to confuse people with what Jesus said in the New Testament.”

Here your transcriber stops to collapse in a fit of uncontrollable laughter, and then makes a mental note of this most excellent example of biblical cherry-picking, which will come in handy for future blog posts.

If Levitical dietary code no longer applies (and I’d like someone to show me where Jesus said it no longer applies), but everything else in Leviticus does apply, then such righteous men of God as Messrs. Dobson and Minnery should still be upholding the following Levitical laws:

• sacrificing goats for sin atonement (Lev. 4:22-28);

• undergoing cleansing rituals after touching a dead bug (Lev. 5:2-3) — which you shouldn’t do anyway (Lev. 11:31) — or having sex with a menstruating woman (Lev. 15:24, 20:18);

• staying away from menstruating women altogether (Lev. 15:19-30, 33);

• avoiding even looking at a woman while she’s menstruating (Lev. 18:19);

• making “wave” and “heave” offerings of animal fat, breasts, and thighs, which God commanded “by a statute for ever” (Lev. 7:30-36);

• purifying your woman for 33 days after she gives birth to a boy, or for 66 days after she gives birth to a girl (Lev. 12:1-5), and getting your priest to kill a lamb, a pigeon, a turtledove (or in some cases, two turtles) to cleanse your woman of her “blood issue” (Lev. 12:6-8);

• accepting the fact that if you accidentally get semen on yourself, your woman, or anything you own, you’ll all be unclean until nighttime, even if you wash it off (Lev. 15:16-18, 32);

• making sure your cow isn’t having interspecies sex, keeping the seeds you plant separate from one another, and never wearing linen-wool blends (Lev. 19:19);

• never making supernaturally-inspired predictions (Lev. 19:26);

• letting your hair grow long on the sides (like the Hasidim do), and never trimming your beard — you do have a beard, don’t you? (Lev. 19:27, 21:5);

• never getting a tattoo (Lev. 19:28);

• killing people who curse their parents (Lev. 20:9), people who use profanity in any way (Lev. 24:16), adulterers (Lev. 20:10), men who sleep with their mothers-in-law (Lev. 20:11, 14) or daughters-in-law (Lev. 20:12), gay men (Lev. 20:13), people who have sex with animals — and the animals, too (Lev. 20:15-16), people who consult psychics (Lev. 20:27), and girls who act like sluts (Lev. 21:9);

• eliminating divorcees, women who use dirty words (Lev. 21:7), and widows (Lev. 21:13-14) from your list of potential wives;

• keeping disabled people, ugly people (Lev. 21:18), people with broken hands or feet (Lev. 21:19), hunchbacks, dwarves, blind people, people with a Vitamin C deficiency, people with scabby skin, and men with damaged testicles (Lev. 21:20) out of your church;

• buying slaves (Lev. 22:11) and making slaves out of your neighbors and their families, forever (Lev. 25:44-46);

Dobson: “He’s equating that with the Sermon on the Mount.”

No, dummy, he’s not equating Levitical law with the Sermon on the Mount — he’s saying that if you want a theocracy, you’re going to have a hell of a time deciding whose version of Christianity will be the law of the land: your barbaric, wrathful, spiteful Old Testament, or his relatively saner, more loving New Testament.

Minnery: “And you remember, more recently, he quoted the Sermon on the Mount— cited the Sermon on the Mount as justifying same-sex marriage…

No, he didn’t justify same-sex marriage at all, Minnery.

Minnery is referring to a March, 2008, interview Obama gave to WTAP-TV, in which he said:

“I will tell you that I don’t believe in gay marriage, but I do think that people who are gay and lesbian should be treated with dignity and respect and that the state should not discriminate against them. So, I believe in civil unions that allow a same-sex couple to visit each other in a hospital or transfer property to each other. I don’t think it should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state. If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans.”

Obama is plainly, unbudgeably opposed to same-sex marriage — which he reiterated in the statement with which you are taking issue here. But you didn’t play that sound clip, did you, Minnery? Of course not, because it would have exposed you as a liar.

(By the way, while I agree with Obama’s last sentence — that the Sermon on the Mount is more relevant “than an obscure passage in Romans” [he’s alluding to Romans 1:26-27], Obama infuriates me with his stubborn opposition to marriage equality. Surprisingly, a presumed Obama supporter named Carlos takes issue with this, right on Obama’s Web site: “Interesting use here of the Sermon on the Mount. It would be better for Obama to just say that he is against state sponsored marriage period. Otherwise, it sounds like gay marriage is second class and not worthy of state approval while non-gay marriage is ok. It looks to me that Obama’s belief about gay marriage is simply a tactic to bridge the cultural gap between people who are more open to homosexuality and people who have problems with it. By being against gay marriage, Obama is softening his pro-gayness with the anti-gay crowd in the hopes that the anti crowd will see his point about the Sermon on the Mount and treating people fairly.” Well said, Carlos.)

Minnery: “…so it seems that he is vastly confused about the details of biblical exposition, that he’s painting himself in this highly religious aura.”

Dobson: “And then says “Go read the Bible…’”

[laughter]

Dobson: “…as though he’s some kind of biblical authority.”

[crosstalk and boring stuff]

Minnery: “… I think he is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter. I just don’t know whether he’s doing it willfully or accidentally.”

Dobson: “I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology.”

Minnery: “Well, that’s exactly what he’s doing, and there’s another clip that gives everybody an understanding of his notion of morality.”

Obama: “…I do not believe that religious people have a monopoly on morality, I would rather have someone who is grounded in morality and ethics, and who is also secular, affirm their morality and ethics and values without pretending that they’re something they’re not. They don’t need to do that. None of us need to do that.”

Minnery: “See, he’s saying moral people do not have to be religious people — but religion is the grounding, the foundation for morality.”

So, animals are by nature immoral, because they aren’t religious? Mmm’kay.

Guess you’ve never heard of the Ethic of Reciprocity, Minnery.

Minnery: “I mean, read what George Washington said about that: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” That’s our first president.”

Our first president also said:

“I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction. To this consideration we ought to ascribe the absence of any regulation, respecting religion, from the Magna-Charta of our country.”

…responding to a group of clergymen who complained that the Constitution lacked mention of Jesus Christ, in 1789, Papers, Presidential Series, 4:274, the “Magna-Charta” here refers to the proposed United States Constitution

 
“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.”

…letter to Edward Newenham, October 20, 1792, quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom, also James A Haught, 2000 Years of Disbelief

 
“If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mohometans, Jews or Christians of any Sect, or they may be Atheists.”

…letter to Tench Tilghman asking him to secure a carpenter and a bricklayer for his Mount Vernon estate, March 24, 1784, in Paul F Boller, George Washington & Religion (1963) p. 118, quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, “Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church”

 
“Among many other weighty objections to the Measure, it has been suggested, that it has a tendency to introduce religious disputes into the Army, which above all things should be avoided, and in many instances would compel men to a mode of Worship which they do not profess.”

…to John Hancock, then president of Congress, expressing opposition to a congressional plan to appoint brigade chaplains in the Continental Army (1777), quoted from a letter to Cliff Walker from Doug Harper (2002)

 
And here’s what some of George’s contemporaries had to say about our first president:

“Dr. Rush told me (he had it from Asa Green) that when the clergy addressed General Washington, on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never, on any occasion, said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion, and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to disclose publicly whether he was a Christian or not. However, he observed, the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly, except that, which he passed over without notice.”

…quoted from Jefferson’s Works, Vol. iv., p. 572. (Asa Green “was probably the Reverend Ashbel Green, who was chaplain to congress during Washington’s administration.” — Farrell Till in “The Christian Nation Myth.”)

 
“I know that Gouverneur Morris, who claimed to be in his secrets, and believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more in that system [Christianity] than he did.”

…in his private journal, February, 1800, quoted from Jefferson’s Works, Vol. iv., p. 572 (”Gouverneur Morris was the principal drafter of the Constitution of the United States; he was a member of the Continental Congress, a United States senator from New York, and minister to France. He accepted, to a considerable extent, the skeptical views of French Freethinkers.” — John E Remsberg, Six Historic Americans.)

 
“[Washington was] a total stranger to religious prejudices, which have so often excited Christians of one denomination to cut the throats of those of another.”

…in Paul F Boller, George Washington & Religion, Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 118, quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, “Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church”

 
“Sir, Washington was a Deist.”

…rector of the church Washington had attended with his wife, to The Reverend Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, upon Wilson’s having inquired of Abercrombie regarding Washington’s religious beliefs, quoted from John E Remsberg, Six Historic Americans

 
“I have diligently perused every line that Washington ever gave to the public, and I do not find one expression in which he pledges, himself as a believer in Christianity. I think anyone who will candidly do as I have done, will come to the conclusion that he was a Deist and nothing more.”

…in an interview with Mr. Robert Dale Owen written on November 13, 1831, which was publlshed in New York two weeks later, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 27

 
“Though the General attended the churches in which Dr. White officiated, whenever he was in Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War, and afterwards while President of the United States, he was never a communicant in them.”

…from Wilson, Memoir of Bishop White, p. 188, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 27

 
“…he was pleased to express himself gratified by what he had heard from our pulpit; but there was nothing that committed him relatively to religious theory.”

…in a letter to the Rev B C C Parker, dated November 28, 1832, from Wilson, Memoir of Bishop White, pp. 189-191, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 27

 
“I do not believe that any degree of recollection will bring to my mind any fact which would prove General Washington to have been a believer in the Christian revelation further than as may be hoped from his constant attendance upon Christian worship, in connection with the general reserve of his character.”

…in a letter to the Rev B C C Parker, dated December 31, 1832, from Wilson, Memoir of Bishop White, pp. 189-191, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 28

 
“The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected [Washington; Adams; Jefferson; Madison; Monroe; Adams; Jackson] not a one had professed a belief in Christianity…. Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism.”

…in a sermon preached in October, 1831, first sentence quoted in John E Remsberg, Six Historic Americans, second sentence quoted in Paul F Boller, George Washington & Religion, pp. 14-15

 
“In regard to the subject of your inquiry, truth requires me to say that General Washington never received the communion in the churches of which I am the parochial minister. Mrs. Washington was an habitual communicant. I have been written to by many on that point, and have been obliged to answer them am as I now do you.”

…the first bishop of Pennsylvania, friend of Washington and bishop of Christ’s Church in Philadelphia, which Washington attend for about 25 years when he happened to be in that city, in a letter to Colonel Mercer of Fredericksberg, Virginia, on August 15, 1835, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 27

 
“I find no one who ever communed with him.”

…rector of Alexandria, Virginia, in response to a letter from Reverend Origen Bacheler, cited in The Bacheler-Owen Debate, vol. 2, p. 262, quoted from Franklin Steiner, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents, pp. 28

 
Thanks to Positive Atheism!

Minnery: “Our second president, John Adams, said: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Our second president also said:

“The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?”

…letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815

 
“Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.”

…”A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” (1787-88), from Adrienne Koch, ed, The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society (1965) p. 258, quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, “Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church”

 
“We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions … shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power … we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society.”

…letter to Dr. Price, April 8, 1785, quoted from Albert Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom (1991)

 
“As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?”

…letter to FA Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816

 
“When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it.”

…from Rufus K Noyes, Views of Religion, quoted from from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

 
“Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the ancient Christianism which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christian factions, above all the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed upon the public? Miracles after miracles have rolled down in torrents.”

…letter to Thomas Jefferson, December 3, 1813, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

 
“Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.”

…letter to his son, John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816, from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

 
“I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved — the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!”

…letter to Thomas Jefferson, from George Seldes, The Great Quotations, also from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

 
“God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.”

…”this awful blashpemy” that he refers to is the myth of the Incarnation of Christ, from Ira D Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

 
“We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact! There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. … I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. … It is true, few persons appear desirous to put such laws in execution, and it is also true that some few persons are hardy enough to venture to depart from them. But as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed. The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not bear examination, and they ought to be separated. Adieu.”

…one of his last letters to Thomas Jefferson, January 23, 1825. Adams was 90, Jefferson 81 at the time; both died on July 4th of the following year, on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. From Adrienne Koch, ed, The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society (1965) p. 234. Quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, “Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church.”

 
“The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.”

…carried unanimously by the Senate and signed into law by John Adams

 
Thanks again to Positive Atheism!

Dobson: “Related to that, Tom, there is another comment in Senator Obama’s speech that is of incredible importance in understanding his worldview. And it’s gonna be kind of difficult to explain — I ask people to really stay with me here — uh, he’s trying to make the case that it is anti-democratic to believe or fight for moral principles in the Bible that are not supported by people of all faiths, or presumably by those of no faith. Let’s listen to what he had to say: 
 

Obama: “Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”

Dobson: “What the senator is saying there in essence is that ‘I can’t seek to pass legislation, for example, that bans partial birth abortions, because there are people in the culture who don’t see that as a moral issue, and if I can’t get everyone to agree with me, it is un-democratic to try to pass legislation that I find offensive to the scripture.’ Now, that is a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution.”

Why is it “a fruitcake interpretation”? Obama’s admitting that he has no right to impose his religious beliefs through legislation.

Granted, Obama is being a total hypocrite here; he often cites (or blames) his religious beliefs for his staunch opposition to same-sex marriage equality. Typical (and just one of many examples, before and since) is this statement he made during an interview with WBBM-AM in 2004:

“I’m a Christian, and so although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.”

I’ll give Obama credit for one thing (and one thing only): At least he, unlike you, Messrs. Dobson and Minnery, realizes he might be a misguided bonehead on this issue. As he wrote in The Audacity of Hope:

“It is my obligation, not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided, just as I cannot claim infallibility in my support of abortion rights. I must admit that I may have been infected with society’s prejudices and predilections and attributed them to God; that Jesus’ call to love one another might demand a different conclusion; and that in years hence I might be seen on the wrong side of history.

Sad, though, how willing he is to support abortion rights — which most Christians see as murder — and not marriage equality, which does no harm to anyone or anything, and in fact only enhances life and affirms love.

Nevertheless, Dobson, you’re wrong with your re-wording of what Obama said in his 2006 speech.

Dobson: “Uh, this is why we have elections, to support what we believe to be wise and moral. We don’t have to go to the lowest common denominator of morality, which is what he is suggesting. Remember, Tom, that Senator Obama is a man who, while he was in the state legislature, did not oppose the killing of babies who were aborted, but then somehow came into the world alive.”

Believe it or not, Dobson isn’t pulling the first part of the second sentence out of his butt. After passing by hundreds of hysterical wingnut media outlets, I finally found one source reliable enough to lend credence to the “living abortions” story, the Beeb: “One in 30 foetuses aborted for medical reasons is born alive, a 10-year study at 20 UK hospitals has found. …”

I’m not touching this one, folks, other than to reiterate that I’m one of those odd ducks who finds abortion morally reprehensible (yes, Dobson, we agnostics have “morals,” too), yet I am 100% pro-choice. In a nutshell: It is not my place to judge or deny a woman’s right to her own body (we are not baby-making machines), and thus I’ll continue to fight for a woman’s right to choose. Period.

That, ironically, puts me on the same page as Obama — at least as far as abortion is concerned.

I do have one question for Dobson, though: If you’re in such a state over “living abortions,” why aren’t you leading some sort of movement to adopt them? Or, as most radical righties, does your concern for human beings end once they’re out of the uterus?

However, I have no idea what Dobson is talking about when he says that as a state legislator, Obama “did not oppose the killing of babies who were aborted, but then somehow came into the world alive.” Was there a Let’s Kill Living Abortions bill in the Illinois state legislature? Methinks Dobson is indeed pulling this idiocy out of his butt.

Dobson: “That to him was a moral position.”

Huh? What are you talking about, and what do you mean?

Dobson: “To me its anathema. Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?

“What he’s trying to say here is, unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe. I thank God that that’s not what the Constitution says.”

Well, I’ll give you that, Jimbo — that’s not what the Constitution says at all. Unfortunately (for you), that’s not what Obama was saying either. At all.

Dobson: “”Tom, as you can see, I’ve managed to raise my blood pressure here…”

. . .

Minnery: “He seems in this speech not to like pastors who he says deliver more screeds than sermons. Now, remember, this was delivered in oh-six — before anybody knew about his then-pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who has now become his ex-pastor.”

Obama: “They don’t want faith used to belittle or to divide. They’re tired of hearing folks deliver more screed than sermon.”

Dobson: “Tom, I, uh, read the transcipt of this, and this one jumped out at me. You know, how interesting it is that Senator Obama is condemning pastors there for their highly emotional diabtribe, when he sat for twenty years under the tutelage of his own pastor, and eventually had to disown him.”

Minnery: “And he only disowned him when it became public that Reverend Jeremiah Wright was delivering ‘more screed than sermon.’ Apparently, Senator Obama didn’t recognize it in his own pastor, in his own church.”

Well, I can’t argue with that.

Next, it’s onto John McCain, and “the marriage issue”:

Minnery: “We are on the lip of seeing the Arizona state legislature vote, out of the legislature to the people in the fall, a state marriage amendment. That’ll be the third marriage amendment on the ballot. California will be on the ballot, Florida will be on the ballot… But it is the Republican senate that is dithering — I think there’s a lot of political cowardice there — and whether this gets out or not, we don’t know.

“We have asked Senator John McCain’s staff to say — please! — ‘the senator says he supports state marriage amendments.’ Here’s a state marriage amendment in his own home state that dearly needs a word from him. Will he say something about it to encourage the, uh, Republican leaders in the senate in Arizona to have some backbone? Not a word has Senator McCain said!”

Dobson: “Not a word! And he has said on numerous occasions, ‘I believe marriage can be and should be protected at the state level.’ This is in his state, largely because the Republicans in the state senate who have the majority have not made it happen and, as you said, the senator has not said a word about it. That is very disappointing. So this is a year when we have a lot of frustration with both political parties.”

Heh! Try belonging to a party that’s supposed to stand up for gay rights, and whose silence, at large, is utterly deafening.

Minnery: “Even as we’re speaking today, that vote in the Arizona senate may happen — we don’t know. But if there was enough backbone, they could have gotten us out of the state senate early in the session, so — beyond the ballot — and we could be preparing for the campaign in the fall.”

That vote happened today, Tom:

Senators vote down measure to ban gay marriage

With the clock running out, conservative lawmakers in the Arizona Senate employed a rare procedural maneuver June 25 to force a vote on a proposal that would amend the state Constitution to effectively ban gay marriage.

But the ballot measure went down by a vote of 14-to-11; although a majority voted in approval, it needed 16 votes to pass.

If passed at a later date, SCR1042 would ask voters in November to define marriage in the Constitution to state that only a marriage between a man and a woman will be recognized by the state.

The legislation’s failure with only a few days left before the fiscal year ends was a setback for supporters who regard the legislation as a way to reinforce existing statute prohibiting same-sex marriage against what they see is an assault on traditional marriage from activist judges. They also contend that a statute could be changed; a constitutional provision would be hard to undo.

But an official for the Center for Arizona Policy, one of the conservative groups pushing for the measure, said the fight is not over. …

The vote was a temporary victory for Equality Arizona, a group representing the interests of the gay, lesbian and transgender community in the state.

“Today’s actions (bringing the measure to a vote) were an inappropriate use of power,” said Barbara McCullough-Jones, the group’s executive director. “Rather than taking care of the business of the people, political opportunists are using wedge politics to divide this state.” …

Crappy luck next time, Tommy.

Dobson: “OK, Tom, let’s get your blood pressure down. [laughter]

Before ending the show, Dobson slams all the candidates (including Hillary Clinton) for not talking about “preserving the family.”

Dobson: “It is as though the family does not matter… They don’t give a hoot about the family!”

* Check out what Dobson said in his 1995 speech to the CNP:

“Well, I don’t know if you saw the article on November 6th, right after that, in the Washington Post. This one really took my breath away! It is referring to a Dr. Michael Tuly. Dr. Tuly is a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado. He is what he calls a ‘eugenicist.’ That gives you a clue. He says, and Tuly does not bother with Pinker’s pretense that what’s under discussion here is only a rare act of desperation, the killing of an unwanted child by a frightened, troubled mother. No, no, no! ‘If it is moral to kill a baby for one, it is moral for all. Indeed, the systematic, professionalized use of infanticide would be a great benefit to humanity. Most people would prefer to raise children who do not suffer from gross deformities or from severe physical, intellectual or emotional handicaps,’ writes eugenicist Tuly. ‘If it could be shown that there is no moral objection to infanticide’ — why would there be no moral objection to infanticide? Because there’s no moral objection to anything! It’s all subjective — ‘the happiness of society could be significantly and justifiably increased.’”

The equation of abortion and infanticide aside, the question I’d like to ask Dobson is whether or not he condemns eugenics outright. What does Dobson think about “fetus washing” — “treating” fetuses by “washing” them with hormones, purportedly to influence their inborn sexual orientation — the latest desperate attempt by the Radical Religious Right to “cure” homosexuality in the womb?

(See also the gay sheep controversy.)

I love the current debate over “fetus washing”; it forces the gay-haters’ admission that we are born gay.

But here’s the best part of Dobson’s speech:

So, there is that perspective and where it leads is to the dehumanization of undesirables and we know where that led in 1938 and after, in Nazi Germany.

You should know all about “the dehumanization of undesirables” and where it leads, Dobson, as your lifelong commitment to the dehumanization (and demonization) of gay and lesbian people is as close to modern-day Nazism as you can get without burning crosses on our lawns.

By the way, Jimbo, you just invoked Godwin’s Law. You lose the argument. Ha-ha!

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April 22, 2008

It Was My Party, and I’ll Cry If I Want To, or: How the Left Lost the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party Lost Me

While scanning today’s headlines, two op/eds jumped out at me; seemingly unrelated, they say exactly the same thing: We — The Left — have lost control of the Democratic Party to the “liberal elites,” the rich, triangulating Third Way DLCers who talk a great talk, but have never walked the walk — and really don’t give a damn about your walk.

The first piece, by Dana Milbank at WaPo, profiles an impoverished Pennsylvania couple who are voting for Hillary Clinton today, and — despite the silly notion that they may not “even think [Barack Obama is] American,” and the extremely disturbing racism prevalent among a few other vocal locals) — their practical, economically-based reasons for refusing to vote for Obama, even if he gets the Democratic nomination (and this couple are Democrats).

The second piece is by Chris Hedges, about whom I’ve written before in these pages; Hedges is the author of one of my favorite and most dog-eared books, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America, which explains in clear, if excruciating, detail just how the Radical Religious Right has managed to embed itself into U.S. politics — and, most importantly, why religious fundamentalists of all stripes believe what they believe, and do what they do.

Make no mistake: Hedges is not the radical leftist secularist of the Right’s worst nightmares. The son of a minister and seminary graduate himself, Hedges is equally critical of atheists as he is of religionists; in his newest book, I Don’t Believe in Atheists, he makes it clear that his belief in God and conviction that sin is real, and the barometer of morality, is steadfast:

We have nothing to fear from those who do or do not believe in God; we have much to fear from those who do not believe in sin. The concept of sin is a stark acknowledgment that we can never be omnipotent, that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest. The concept of sin is a check on the utopian dreams of a perfect world. It prevents us from believing in our own perfectibility or the illusion that the material advances of science and technology equal an intrinsic moral improvement in our species. To turn away from God is harmless. Saints have been trying to do it for centuries. To turn away from sin is catastrophic. …

We discard the wisdom of sin at our peril. …

The question is not whether God exists. It is whether we contemplate or are utterly indifferent to the transcendent, that which cannot be measured or quantified, that which lies beyond the reach of rational deduction.

Hedges’ credibility established, let’s turn our attention to the first op/ed that caught my eye today, by Dana Milbank:

In This Forgotten Town, Obama Can Forget About It

The Monongahela River Valley lost its steel mills in the ’80s and, a quarter-century later, this sad town in the heart of the Mon Valley still hasn’t recovered. Its downtown is a collage of crumbling buildings, and its once-proud landmark, the 102-year-old People’s Union Bank Building, has signs in the window: “Bank Repo Sale. Excellent Deal. Eight stories. Priced to sell!”

It is, in short, just the sort of place Barack Obama was talking about when he said he wasn’t getting the support of blue-collar workers of the industrial heartland because they “cling” to guns and religion out of economic bitterness. It is also the place Obama chose to visit on Monday night, on the eve of Tuesday’s primary — and the reception here explains why Obama, the national front-runner, is expected to lose Pennsylvania. …

The Norgrens, who backed Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, will vote for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday. And if Obama wins the nomination, these Democrats say they’ll vote for Republican John McCain, even though they want an end to the war in Iraq, where their soldier-son is about to start his third tour.

If Hillary Clinton wins Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary — and polls forecast that she will do just that — it will be because of white, working-class voters like the Norgrens. Yet the blue-collar voters poised to keep Clinton’s candidacy alive are also the reason she is losing the national race to Obama: Though still in charge here, they have lost control of the Democratic Party to the wealthy and better-educated. …

The average household in McKeesport earns less than $30,000 a year, barely half the U.S. average. Its population has shrunk and aged with the loss of the mills, and the average home here sells for a mere $45,000. …

The antipathy toward Obama isn’t necessarily logical. Outside the Giant Eagle … Edward Norgren listed his reasons: Clinton’s ad accusing Obama of taking oil-company money; Michelle Obama’s suggestion that she hadn’t been “proud” of her country; Obama’s provocative former preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And, of course, there was the “bitter” remark. …

Now, on to Chris Hedges:

The left has lost its nerve and its direction

The failure of the American left is a failure of nerve. It has been neutralized and rendered ineffectual as a political force because of its refusal to hold fast on core issues, from universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans, to the steadfast protection of workers’ rights, to an immediate withdrawal from the failed occupation of Iraq to a fight against a militarized economy that is hollowing the country out from the inside.

Let the politicians compromise. This is their job. It is not ours. If the left wants to regain influence in the nation’s political life, it must be willing to walk away from the Democratic Party, even if Barack Obama is the nominee, and back progressive, third-party candidates until the Democrats feel enough heat to adopt our agenda. We must be willing to say no. If not, we become slaves. …

The object of a movement is not to achieve political power at any price. It is to create pressure and mobilize citizens around core issues of justice. It is to force politicians and parties to respond to our demands. It is about rewarding, through support and votes, those who champion progressive ideals and punishing those who refuse. And the current Democratic Party, as any worker in a former manufacturing town in Pennsylvania can tell you, has betrayed us. …

The working class has every right to be, to steal a line from Obama, bitter with liberal elites. … Human beings are not, despite what the well-heeled Democratic and Republican apologists for the free market tell you, commodities. They are not goods. They grieve, and suffer and feel despair. They raise children and struggle to maintain communities. The growing class divide is not understood, despite the glibness of many in the media, by complicated sets of statistics or the absurd, utopian faith in unregulated globalization and complicated trade deals. It is understood in the eyes of a man or woman who is no longer making enough money to live with dignity and hope. …

The failure of the left is the failure of well-meaning people who kept compromising and compromising in the name of effectiveness and a few scraps of influence until they had neither. … The left has been transformed into anguished apologists for corporate greed. They have become hypocrites. …

Hope, St. Augustine wrote, has two beautiful daughters. They are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and the courage to see they do not remain the way they are. We stand at the verge of a massive economic dislocation, one forcing millions of families from their homes and into severe financial distress, one that threatens to rend the fabric of our society. If we do not become angry, if we do not muster within us the courage to challenge the corporate state that is destroying our nation, we will have squandered our credibility and integrity at the moment we need it most.

The message is the same — the Democratic Party has forgotten its core values, and we, the left wing of the (formerly-)left wing, have let the party get away with it. Of course, they’ve got the money — but we have the votes. The party can spend all the money in the world trying to schmooze us, but at the end of the day, when it’s your job that’s disappeared, and your kid who goes to school without breakfast, you have to decide what your loyalty to the party has gotten you.

The answer lies within the Democratic Party itself, in both its official platform (for which DNC has deemed the top three “key Democratic Party ideals” as prosperity, peace, and progress), and, more telling, in its simple, clear mission statement, “The Democratic Vision“:

The Democratic Party is committed to keeping our nation safe and expanding opportunity for every American. That commitment is reflected in an agenda that emphasizes the security of our nation, strong economic growth, affordable health care for all Americans, retirement security, honest government, and civil rights.

What’s telling is that, in this statement, national security comes first — and is the first issue mentioned, again, at the beginning of the second sentence — and civil rights comes last, with the economy and vague, imprecise language about “expanding opportunity for every American” and “strong economic growth” jammed in between.

But you have to ask: What do those things mean? What do they mean, in practical terms, to you and your family?

If you take the time to read the full Democratic Party platform, you’ll see that “prosperity, peace, and progress” still take a backseat to more than 18 pages’ worth of discussion about defeating terrorism and strengthening our military.

As essential as it is to prevent another 9/11, the fact remains: If you’re hungry or homeless, you’re not going to give a damn about anything except food and shelter. That’s why the economy is the number-one issue on voters’ minds: We’re talking survival. And a whole lot of us aren’t surviving.

The latest Hightower Lowdown arrived in my mailbox yesterday; the entire issue is dedicated to spelling out, in many simple but terrifying tables, “What 8 years of BushCheney have done to our economy.” I won’t get into the whole thing here; it deserves to be read, and digested, in full. Suffice to say, if you’re not rich, you’re in trouble.

Nevertheless, you may be surprised to learn that economic fears are apparently not affecting votes:

With growing layoffs, tight credit and an ailing housing market, 67 percent say the economy is an extremely important issue, up from 46 percent in November. Gasoline prices follow close behind at 59 percent.

The war in Iraq — the dominant issue for several years — stands at 48 percent. …

Yet those who have become extremely concerned about the economy since last fall show no significant difference from everyone else in backing a presidential candidate. Both groups divide about evenly between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, and between McCain and the other Democrat, Hillary Rodham Clinton. …

People calling the economy extremely important lean toward the two Democratic presidential contenders, while those less concerned prefer McCain. The partisan divide helps explain that, as does income. Of those most worried about the economy, people earning under $50,000 a year prefer the two Democrats over McCain, middle-income earners are divided evenly, and McCain wins the most affluent.

Democrats divide between Obama and Clinton about the same whether or not they are extremely concerned about the economy.

While I’ve long believed (and still do) that a Hillary Clinton administration stands a far greater chance of restoring economic health in the U.S., it appears that voters see so little difference between A) the two Democratic candidates, and/or B) the two parties, that the most pressing issue — the economy — isn’t having much effect on voters who were going to vote Democratic (or Republican) anyway.

And that begs the question: Is there any longer a truly significant difference between the parties, on this or any other urgent issue on which the very survival of our people, and thus our nation, hinges?

Not that I’m advocating anyone vote Republican, mind you — that would be utter insanity. No; what I’m asking you to think about is just how far to the right the Democratic Party has shifted (on every issue, not just the economy), and, more importantly, what you are going to do about it.

Can the Democratic Party be fixed from within? That’s one option. But that’s what we’ve been trying to do all along, isn’t it? We’ve been holding our noses and voting a straight Democratic ticket, because we have no other choice — or so we’ve been told. And while we’ve been gritting our teeth and waiting for our party to return to the core values that made this country great, the big-money types keep dragging the party further and further to the right — and us along with it.

You know the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results every time.

I just can’t do the insanity thing anymore. Where I go from here, I don’t know. The Greens, God love ‘em, cling too stubbornly to the idea that they can run a presidential candidate every term before building the party from the local and state level up (like the Republicans did — quite successfully, if you’ve noticed). I’m not a Libertarian (although, honestly, if Mike Gravel wins the LP nomination, I will be voting Libertarian for the first time in my life). What about the Socialist Party? As noble as Socialist goals are, no, I’m not so idealistic as to believe society can be rebuilt from scratch.

All I know is that I never left the Democratic Party — the Democratic Party left me.

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January 6, 2008

On Marriage Equality and Religious Freedoms

I’m (among other things) liberal, atheist, lesbian, spiritual, vegetarian. I was a Christian from age eight to somewhere in my 29th year. I’ve studied Psychology and Sociology formally and many other subjects informally. For 20 years I worked in Human Services, mostly with adults who have developmental disabilities and adults who have mental illnesses, but also with homeless families. I contribute what I can to organized charities such as America’s Second Harvest, The Humane Society of the US and Doctors Without Borders as well as to “non-organized charities” (so to speak). In short, I try to do good to and for people.

I also refuse to force, either by proselytization or by any other means, other people to live by my beliefs (or lack thereof). For example, I am a vegetarian but I would never demand others become vegetarians nor would I even advocate that they do so. I am an atheist, but I would never try to convince others to give up their belief in god(s) or demand legislation that prohibited religion. I wish to be free to live my life so long as I don’t cause harm to others, and I’ll leave others to be free so long as they don’t cause harm to me. If it harm no one, do as ye will.

For the purposes of the next argument, this graphic will represent me and a hypothetical woman I might want to marry in the future:

My partner and I want to get Married. Yes, I said Married. We don’t want to get Civil-Unioned or Domestic-Partnered, regardless of infinite promises that said bondings will provide the same rights and obligations as Marriage. New Jersey and Vermont experiments with CU/DP prove, once again, that “Separate but Equal” simply isn’t. Legal Marriage provides more than 1,000 federal benefits that no state-based CP/DP can provide, nor can state-by-state Marriage. We need a federally recognized and supported Marriage, just like heterosexual couples have.

Now this picture represents Family X:

Mom and dad of Family X state that they are Christians . They oppose the right of me and my partner to have a federally recognized Marriage because according to their deeply held religious beliefs homosexuality is wrong. In fact, to them I am on par with murderers, thieves, child abusers and drug addicts because I love a woman rather than a man. Nothing I am, stand for or do overcomes the fact that I am a lesbian. I am an “abomination” in their eyes. They voted for the Constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in their state, and they consistently vote for politicians who oppose equal rights for LGBT people.

Now here is my question, and it is a simple one:

Why does Family X feel they have the right to force me, my partner, and millions of others like us, to live according to the dictates of their religion?

If same-sex marriage became legal tomorrow, those opposed would not be forced to marry someone of the same sex. Churches opposed to same-sex marriage would not be required to marry same-sex couples just as they’re not required to marry couples of faiths other than their own. Nobody’s deeply held religious beliefs would be constrained in any way by providing equal marriage rights to gay, lesbian and bisexual Americans.

Even my Democratic politicans feel the need to pander to those who want to keep me from having equal marriage rights, or (worse yet) agree that I don’t deserve equal marriage rights. So I ask again, and hope for some logical answers:

Why does Family X feel they have the right to force me, my partner, and millions of others like us, to live according to the dictates of their religion?

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September 22, 2007

The Radical Religious Right’s Worst Nightmare: Atheists Unite

Wayne Besen on Crazies For Christ:

The Washington Post had a fascinating series last weekend discussing the rise of a movement representing “nonbelievers.” The trend is worldwide, but is also taking root in America, one of the most religious western nations. As radical fundamentalism has spiraled out of control, many people are standing up and loudly declaring that there is simply too much God permeating our society.

According to the Post, the Atheist Alliance International’s membership has almost doubled in the past year to 5,200. Its membership is mushrooming to the point where its national convention in Crystal City later this month has a 500-person waiting list.

. . .

The surge in political atheism is clearly a reaction to the utter obnoxiousness of today’s fundamentalists. No matter what the religion, these fanatics have made it clear that they have a God-given right to rule the earth and subjugate anyone who does not sing from the same hymn sheet.

The Middle East, of course, is the manifestation of such sectarian madness. The Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thinks God wants his country to have a nuclear bomb. This may lead to George W. Bush, who has his own messiah complex, to bomb Tehran. In Saudi Arabia, the government lops off peoples’ heads if they are deemed to have pissed off Allah (homosexuals make the list). In Iraq, it seems everyone is tuned into the God channel and speaks on his behalf. In Israel, meanwhile, ultra-orthodox Jews believe that God has given the “chosen people” all of the land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. But, Palestinian fanatics swear that Allah intends for Muslims to eradicate Israel. With so much God, peace doesn’t stand a prayer.

. . .

This week, our homegrown fundamentalists took center stage with two creepy events in Florida, an important swing state. On Tuesday, they hosted the “Values Voter Presidential Debate,” where lunatics were allowed 24-hour leave from the asylum to ask presidential also-rans their plans to bring our nation back to the Stone Age. …

. . .

The second event is the Family Impact Summit, a three-day hate-a-palooza in a Tampa suburb where a throng of right wing ideologues will mix with “ex-gay” leaders to plot how to take control of America. To counter the event, Equality Florida will hold a press conference and a rally outside the church where the Summit is being held. …

While the fundamentalists fulminate in Tampa, the Post article mentioned one statistic that should worry them. While six percent of people over sixty have no faith in God, one in four adults ages 18-22 have no such faith. I believe this number will only grow as long as “Crazies for Christ” whose main value is vindictiveness represent”God’s people.”

With lots of reader comments at the link.

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