The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXXV

The week in fundie . . .

1. The Unintentional Irony award goes to the opponents of the International Baccalaureate curriculum at a high school in Upper St Clair, Pennsylvania, who appear to be of the view that it comes straight from Chairman Mao:

   "The IB program is anti-American. It does not teach the basic patriotic values of the United States," said Judy Brown, 64, a retired merchandising and sales representative who has a daughter that attended Upper St. Clair schools. "It's almost like brainwashing."

   A hostile board member was heard to utter:

   "Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie;" and, "Jesus Christ as the redeemer of man is the center and purpose of human history. That is why all authentically religious tradition must be allowed to manifest their own identity publicly, free from any pressure to hide or disguise it."

   Got that? Not forcing Jeebus and flag-waving patriotism down the throats of students constitutes "brainwashing." (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)
   
2. A Catholic bishop in Chicago is seeking legal changes that would shield Church institutions from having to pay out "excessive damages" in sex abuse lawsuits, on the grounds that they "jeopardize the mission of the church" and hence "place an excessive burden on the free exercise of religion for American Catholics." Oh, please. If the Catholic church wishes to minimise the damages resulting from sex abuse lawsuits, the answer is absurdly simple: it needs to stop engaging in or sheltering the perpetrators of sexual abuse. (Chicago Tribune, via the Atheist Experience)
3. Sherri Shepherd, who is proving herself to be someone you want in your corner should you ever find yourself playing team Trivial Pursuit, opines: "I don't think anything predated Christians." The Greeks? The Romans? "Jesus came before them." Shepherd is quite the polymath: not only is she full-bottle on world history, she's also formidable on the earth sciences. (The Huffington Post, via Pharyngula)
4. Florida's Palm Beach Community College refuses to provide health benefits to same-sex partners of its employees. It is more than willing, however, "to offer workers insurance for their pets." (365Gay.com, via Morons.org)
5. A Saudi appeals court judge has threatened to sentence a rape victim to death if she appeals against her current sentence of 200 lashes and six months in prison for "illegal mingling" with an unrelated male. (via Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
   

Just to make it worth your while . . .

Pat Condell on Catholic morality


The videos of this year's Beyond Belief conference are now available online.

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXXIV

The week in fundie . . .

1. The Opus Dei wing of the Liberal Party is being blamed by moderates for the fall of the Howard Government. (While they're at it, they might also throw some blame at Howard himself for backing Silas in Mitchell.) (Sydney Morning Herald)
2. The Australian Christian bookstore chain Koorong (along with other Christian book retailers) has indicated that it will be unlikely to stock a new Bible study guide challenging the notion that the Bible excludes same-sex relationships. (The Age)
3. A British primary school teacher in the Sudan faces a maximum of 40 lashes, six months in jail and a fine for the dastardly crime of "allegedly insulting Islam's prophet by allowing children to call a teddy bear Mohammed." You have got to be fucking kidding me. (AFP; see also Pharyngula)
4. I'll let this grab from a Cutting Edge radio transcript speak for itself:

   The demons of Satan's army will soon physically manifest themselves as Aliens, arriving in armadas of space ships which we have heretofore called UFO's. The plan calls for them to suddenly appear at many places on Earth simultaneously. Some will appear at the White House to confer with the President; some will appear at the United Nations; other aliens will appear at key governmental buildings all over the globe. Aliens will appear in some people's homes or on their front yards. The world's peoples will literally be shocked out of their minds. This is the Plan. This may occur before the worldwide Rapture of the Church; we must be prepared to deal wisely with this planned phenomenon.

   (Via Fundies Say the Darndest Things)
5. "Nice soul you have here. Awful shame if something were to happen to it." More standover tactics by Catholic clergy (obviously from the Pell wing) in the US. (The story comes via Fundies Say the Darndest Things. The mobster reference should be credited to Denis Loubet of the Non-Prophets)
6. I just had a look at the Australian Christian Lobby's list of what it considers are the strengths and weaknesses of the Australian Greens' policies. Among the "weaknesses" the Lobby identifies are the Greens' support for a Bill of Rights, and their support for the extension of anti-discrimination legislation to (partially-taxpayer-funded) private schools as well as public schools--a reminder, if any were required, of how the ACL and the Religious Right in Australia generally are no friends of liberal democracy.
   

UPDATE: Off-topic, but Phillip Adams really sums up why Labor's victory is so sweet.



Humor via Atheist Media:



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The Wonderful World of Magical Thnking XXXIII

The week in fundie . . .

1. God hearts Howard's policies: Howard. (Sydney Morning Herald)
2. Nothing restores my faith in the intersection of faith and politics than another heartwarming story from Saudi Arabia. Last week an appeals court increased the punishment meted out to a gang-rape victim (perfectly understandable, of course: she was in a car with males who were not her relatives) to 200 lashes and six months in prison. (via Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
3. And nothing restores my faith in the willingness of certain Christians to follow the example of the central figure of their religion than the openness and tolerance displayed by the North Carolina Baptist State Convention, which last week expelled a congregation for welcoming gays and lesbians. Fundies. If they're not lying for Jesus, they're hating for him. (via Morons.org)
4. Meanwhile in Britain, women are queuing up for a kind of cosmetic surgery known as "virginity repair" to appease their future spouses and in-laws. All in the name of Islamic fundamentalism. All taxpayer-funded. (Daily India)
5. The response to PBS' Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial is worth the price of admission (so to speak). (via Pharyngula)
   

Secular Believers:

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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXXII

The week in fundie . . .

David Attenborough on God

A US Federal judge has ordered an anti-abortionist to remove Web site postings that "exhorted readers to kill an abortion provider by shooting her in the head" and featured the provider's name, photo and address. (via Fundies Say the Darndest Things)

Who would Jesus child-traffick?: A UK-based Christian evangelical preacher, who promised infertile Kenyan couples "miracle babies," convinced them that they were pregnant when they were not, and led them to believe that they had given birth in backstreet clinics, will be extradited back to Kenya to face five counts of child stealing. (via Fundies Say the Darndest Things)

The AP has a report on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Maldives, which in late September culminated in a nailbomb attack in a park in the capital of Male popular with tourists.

A school board in California has approved a plan to put posters declaring "In God We Trust" in every classroom. Why? Because "we need to promote patriotism and promote it in our schools. We can't just assume that the younger generations are going to have that strong love for God and their country the way the older generations do." The $12,000 that it will cost to purchase the posters will come out of that portion of the school's budget reserved for the purchase of instructional materials. Why? Because Christian proselytism and flag-waving patriotism are far more important than education. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Professional whiners The Catholic League have issued a warning that the film The Golden Compass could "cause unsuspecting parents to get the [His Dark Materials] books for their children. OH NOES!!! (via Pharyngula)

A schoolgirl in Illinois was given detention for hugging two of her friends. Hugging is verboten in her school because, according to school policy, it "is in poor taste, reflects poor judgment, and brings discredit to the school and to the persons involved." (via Morons.org )

I wonder if this is the kind of collaboration that is being urged by some members of the Right blogosphere. Anti-gay activist Paul Cameron, whose "research" is often cited by fundamentalist groups, recently addressed a front organisation of the British Nationalist Party. (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)

BBC Profile: Richard Dawkins
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Surprise, fucking surprise

Family First is demanding that all Federal candidates declare whether they are now, or ever have been TEH GAY:

The Family First candidate in the far north Queensland seat of Leichhardt says voters have a right to know the sexual preference of all candidates contesting the federal election.

A report in today's Courier-Mail newspaper says Family First's Ben Jacobsen demanded that the Liberal candidate Charlie McKillop declare if she is gay.

Mr Jacobsen, who is against gay relationships, says he was not targeting Ms McKillop, but speaking generally about every candidate.

"Look I think this is a public office, this is a person that's going to represent Leichhardt in our House of Representatives," he said.

"I think the public have a right to know the values that you're going to pursue in Parliament." (ABC)

And everybody knows that gay values aren't Australian values, non? Everybody knows that as soon as you let one of those into Parliament, they'll immediately proceed to infect our beloved Christian democracy with TEH GAY. Santorum spreading everywhere. Before you know it, your 15-year old son is being sodomised with the rough end of a heroin-laced outcomes-based education, while being forced to watch lesbian witch porn on the Internet.

Fundies First: the gift that keeps on giving.

UPDATE: The backpedalling has begun already. Read more!

Election '07: Whither the religious moderates?

"The centre needs to be reaffirmed," says Alister McGrath. "I want to make it clear, I have no doubt there are some very weird religious people who might well be dangerous, but those of us who believe in God, know that, and we're doing all we can to try and minimise their influence." I seriously doubt it. All I seem to hear from religious moderates nowadays is bitching and moaning about how the mean and nasty atheists--sorry--"new atheists"--don't understand religion and how wonderful it is. (There are exceptions, of course). Even McGrath is "doing all he can" to minimise the influence of the religious nutjobs: he's in Australia "helping evangelicals brush up on their arguments against The God Delusion" (emphasis added).

Meanwhile, the loudest and most influential voices in Australian Christendom belong to the Religious Right. You don't believe me? Back in August the Australian Christian Lobby was able to organise a National Press Club event, broadcast live across the country, in which both John Howard and Kevin Rudd addressed 200 church figures. That's influence.

Whither the religious moderates when this was taking place?

Want more evidence? Try this one on: it is actually possible, in a secular liberal democracy such as Australia, for someone who advocates the teaching of faith-based pseudoscience in the science classrooms of public schools, and who considers homosexuality to be a "perversion," to gain preselection as a candidate in a major political party. Instead of laughing and mocking him all the way back to his megachurch, enough party members consider him a suitable representative of their political organisation.

Whither the religious moderates in the Liberal Party, and why aren't they doing all they can to minimise the influence of this breed of nutjob, not to mention his supporters?

Now the Australian Christian Lobby has set its sights on Labor. Kevin Rudd wears his love for Baby Jesus on his sleeve, so the ACL is seeking to wedge him on the issues that should be closest to the heart of any Christian. No, not poverty. No, not the environment. I mean the really important stuff, like "family values"--which basically translates as gay marriage, abortion, porn on the intertubes and gay marriage. The Religious Right was able to wedge Labor on the gay marriage issue back in 2004, and Labor of course dropped its pants, bent over, stuffed the ball gag into its mouth and willingly submitted. Will it happen again? Probably.

Whither the religious moderates in the Labor Party? Kevin Rudd marked his ascendancy to the leadership of the Labor Party with a Monthly essay that, with its emphasis on the social-gospel element of Christianity, threatened to pull out the rug from beneath the Religious Right. He had the cojones to stick it to the fundies back then; does he still possess them now, or will he be reduced to shameless pandering? The ACL certainly hopes so.

Meanwhile, Australia's foremost member of the Spanish Inquisition has offered an apologia for the continued legal discrimination against gays. "Same-sex marriage and adoption changes the meaning of marriage, family, parenting and childhood for everyone, not just for homosexual couples," says Cardinal Pell, without offering any supporting evidence. His comments have the support, naturally, of the ACL's Jim Wallace, who says:

[Discrimination] is not something that is necessarily a bad concept, [. . .] I think what we're talking about here is making sure that while we remove unfair discrimination, that we do not allow a very small part of the population to force their model for relationships to be adopted as the community norm, when it isn't.

OH NOES!!! Ending discrimination against gays = MANDATORY BUGGERY!!!

[Wallace] says the problem is that equal rights for gay families complicate the definition of family.

"It confuses children and it's suggested that this is a normal and healthy alternative," he said.

OH NOES!! Ending discrimination against gay familes = LITTLE CHILDREN BEING SEDUCED INTO A LIFETIME OF BUGGERY!!!

Whither the religious moderates on this issue? Why aren't they doing all they can to minimise the influence of this Bronze-Age model of morality?

No, I guess it's easier to whine about the mean and nasty atheists not understanding religion and how wonderful it can be. Meanwhile, the Religious Right's two-pronged (Protestant-fundie, and Catholic-fundie) assault on secular liberal democracy continues unabated. I've said it before, and I'll say it now: we need people in Australian politics who are willing to speak up for the Enlightenment constituency (and religious moderates, frankly, can't be trusted to do it). We think, and we vote.

P.S. I wasn't the only one unimpressed with the recent Religion Report interview with Alister McGrath. It is being roundly panned on the ABC Guestbook.
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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXX

The week in fundie:

1. There's been plenty of chatter on Oz blogs regarding the Family First "I can't believe it's not a Christian political party" Christian political party:

   About time there was some scrutiny of "Family" First (Mr Lefty)
   Family First home movies (Grods)
   Family First stifles free speech (Grods)
   Absolutely no connection between Family First and the church at all (Grods)
   “Right-Wing” Christian Australia’s War on Liberal Democracy (Thinker's Podium)
   

2. Southern Baptist seminary course teaches women students to "graciously submit to their husbands' leadership." Students learn "how to set tables, sew buttons and sustain lively dinnertime conversation." (via The Atheist Experience)
   
   More over the fold . . .
3. Pope Benedict on faith-based schools: "It is incumbent upon governments to afford parents the opportunity to send their children to religious schools by facilitating the establishment and financing of such institutions."(via Dogma Free America)
   
4. In case you missed it, Tuesday October 23 was the Earth's birthday. 6010 years young. "Why was she born so beautiful, why was she born at all? . . ." (via The Atheist Experience)
5. From a creationist lesson plan:

   Evaluation: Students will be monitored by teacher observation during the classroom discussion, group work and answering the appropriate questions. Reflection paragraphs will be collected. The teacher will try to determine the students’ new courage and ability to defend their belief in the Creator.

   How's that for academic freedom? (via Pharyngula)
6. According to Pravda, Melbourne University biologists have discovered that dolphins descended from the human inhabitants of Atlantis. (via Pharyngula)
7. Re-closeted gay fundie James Hartline's explanation for the recent fires in California:

   They shook their fists at God and said, “We don't care what the Bible says, We want the California school children indoctrinated into homosexuality!” And then Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law the heinous SB777 which bans the use of “mom” and “dad” in the text books and promotes homosexuality to all school children in California.
   
   And then the wildfires of Southern California engulfed the land like a raging judgment against the radicalized anti-christian California rebels.

   
   (via Pharyngula)
8. "Security Moms": there is a new conservative group in the US (actually a front group for a conservative Washington think-tank) that agitprops in favour of the Bush Administration's national security and foreign policies. Family Security Matters has advocated that Bush make himself President-for-Life (in the tinpot dictator sense), and ranks universities and colleges (all of them) #2 in its list of the "Ten Most Dangerous Organizations in America" (behind Media Matters). (via Kazim's Korner)
9. Banning Harry Potter: it's not just for Protestant fundies anymore. (Boston Globe)
10. Evangelical Christian UK Army Chief of Staff declares that "Christian leaders and chaplains in the Army [are] needed to equip soldiers for" life after death. (via Dogma Free America)
    

Read more!

The Bill Muehlenberg Trophy: Joseph Massad

Joseph Massad, Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, has published a book in which he argues that

there are no homosexuals in the entire Arab world, except for a few who have been brainwashed into believing they have a homosexual identity by an aggressive Western homosexual missionizing movement he calls "Gay International." [. . .] According to the author, "It is the very discourse of the Gay International which produces homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist" (emphasis added).

The claim is advanced in the third chapter of Desiring Arabs, based upon an earlier paper of his (“Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World”).

TEH GAY AGENDA is a familiar Christian Right meme, and
the idea that gays and lesbians do not exist in the Middle East has most recently been put by one Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Massad simply presents the homophobic ravings of Christian and Muslim fundies and expresses them in the idiom of postcolonial studies. As former Guardian Middle East correspondent Brian Whitaker observes in a review of Desiring Arabs,

Massad talks of a “missionary” campaign orchestrated by what he calls the “Gay International”. Its inspiration, he says, came partly from “the white western women’s movement, which had sought to universalise its issues through imposing its own colonial feminism on the women’s movements in the non-western world”, but he also links its origins to the Carter administration’s use of human rights to “campaign against the Soviet Union and Third World enemies”.

Like the major US- and European-based human rights organisations (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International) and following the line taken up by white western women's organisations and publications, the Gay International was to reserve a special place for the Muslim countries in its discourse as well as its advocacy. The orientalist impulse … continues to guide all branches of the human rights community. (p 161)

Oddly, since this is central to his argument, Massad offers no evidence to substantiate his claim. There are plenty of reasons other than an “orientalist impulse” why gay rights activists might justifiably pay attention to Muslim countries (punishments for same-sex acts, for instance, tend to be heavier there, on paper if not always in practice, and the only countries in the world where the death penalty for sodomy still applies justify it on the basis of Islamic law) but that is not the same as reserving “a special place” for them in the discourse.

Then again, I suppose the demand that extraordinary claims of the kind Massad advances be supported by empirical evidence may be written off as another manifestation of Western imperialism. It gets worse:

State repression against gay people happens on a frequent basis across the Middle East. Massad, however, who claims to be a supporter of sexual freedom per se, is oddly impassive when confronted with the vast catalogue of anti-gay state violence in the Muslim world. Massad, unlike Ahmadinejad, does acknowledge that "gay-identified" people exist in the Middle East, but he views them with derision. Take, for instance, his description of the Queen Boat victims as "westernized, Egyptian, gay-identified men" who consort with European and American tourists. A simple "gay" would have sufficed. He smears efforts to free the men by writing of the "openly gay and anti-Palestinian Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank" and the "anti-Arab and anti-Egyptian [Congressman] Tom Lantos" who circulated a petition amongst their colleagues to cut off U.S. funding to Egypt unless the men were released. He then goes onto belittle not just gay activists (one of whom, a founder of the Gay and Lesbian Arabic Society, referred to the Queen Boat affair as "our own Stonewall," in reference to the 1969 Stonewall riot when a group of patrons at a New York City gay bar resisted arrest, a moment credited with sparking the American gay rights movement) but the persecuted men themselves. The Queen Boat cannot be Stonewall, Massad insists, because the "drag Queens at the Stonewall bar" embraced their homosexual identity, whereas the Egyptian men "not only" did "not seek publicity for their alleged homosexuality, they resisted the very publicity of the events by the media by covering their faces in order to hide from the cameras and from hysterical public scrutiny." Massad does not pause to consider that perhaps the reason why these men covered their faces was because of the brutal consequences they would endure if their identities became public, repercussions far worse than anything the rioters at Stonewall experienced. "These are hardly manifestations of gay pride or gay liberation," Massad sneers.

Joseph Massad: you are a disgrace to academia. Your brand of unscholarly and unsubstantiated rubbish feeds the hysterical paranoiac fantasies of the Horowitz crowd and their puppets in the Republican party--people who seek to restrict academic freedom and stifle the views of those with whom they disagree, and are just salivating for a cause celebre like yourself. Furthermore, it gives a free pass to the persecution of gays and lesbians in the Arab world, by coding any criticism of such persecution as "Western imperialism." Lift your game. Read more!

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXVII

The week in fundie . . .

1. Texas law, with the Orwellian title "Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act," allows evangelical students to proselytise to captive audiences at public school assemblies. (Alternet)
2. Fundies--of both the Protestant and Catholic varieties--call for the shutting down of a San Francisco gay and lesbian festival and for the boycott of sponsor Miller's. (As one liberal pastor observes, a conservative Christian boycott of alcohol--isn't that a little like Hindus boycotting beef?) (The Bay Area Reporter)
3. Archbishop declares he would refuse communion to Rudy Giuliani. (via Morons.org)
4. The Red Mass: where Catholic archbishops have the annual opportunity to instruct the members of the US Supreme Court on how to vote on constitutional matters. (via TheocracyWatch)
   
5. God-fearing evangelical Christians--default moral exemplars to us all--gay-bash an Indian man to death in Sacramento. Apparently "God has 'made an injection' of high numbers of anti-gay Slavic evangelicals into traditionally liberal West Coast cities," according to the host of a Russian-language anti-gay radio show in Sacramento. "'In those places where the disease is progressing, God made a divine penicillin,'" he said. The murderers belong to a Latvian Pentecostal church linked to anti-gay activist Scott Lively, who in the 90s wrote a book comparing gay rights activists to Nazis. (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
6. William Dembski: evil atheist materialist scientists unfairly try to rationalise away the existence of angels (which Dembski insists are as real as rocks and plants and animals) with reason and science and whatnot. Evil atheist materialist scientists!
   

Religion as Child Abuse
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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXIV

The week in fundie:

1. God orders fundie to kill gay man. (via Pharyngula)
2. Fundies disrupt Hindu man praying in the Senate. (via Pharyngula)
3. Fundie mother tries to ban books from school library. (Friendly Atheist)
4. Trailer park bans HIV-positive 2-year old from swimming pool. (via Morons.org)
5. Former US Surgeon-General gagged by Bush administration. (via Morons.org)
   

(More of my thoughts about Jesus Camp over the fold . . .)

Watching the opening scenes of Jesus Camp, in which Pastor Becky Fisher whips up her pre-pubescent flock into a frenzy of flailing limbs and glossolalia, I had a passing thought. Imagine if these kids were encouraged to get passionate about the things that matter--politics, ethics, science, literature, philosophy--instead of rolling around the floor like mindless ululating idiots. Imagine if they could be encouraged to actually use their brains rather than surrendering them to fundamentalist dogma. That's the real travesty of this glimpse into the parallel universe that is Bible Belt USA: a generation of kids--smart kids--whose potential is being squandered in the cause of that politico-religious hybrid known as the Christian Right. A generation of kids whose intellectual development is being corrupted by the pseudoscientific and pseudohistorical claptrap that constitutes the Christian homeschooling curriculum. A generation of kids who are being raised to consider themselves, by virtue of their religious affiliation, as their nation's ruling class--who are urged by the likes of Fisher to Christianise the US, not by the use of reasoned debate and discussion, but by gradually seizing control of its institutions. I stand by my comment in the previous post. This is child abuse, pure and simple.

It would be easy to write this documentary off as a stereotypical representation of fundie America: creation science homeschooling, speaking in tongues, worshipping the image of President Bush, the family pledging allegiance to the Christian flag. It can't be real, can it?

But then you have only to consider the Dover ID case, the Creation Museum, the Left Behind videogame, "Paul Hill Days," the War on Harry Potter, "erototoxins," Paul Cameron, abstinence education, "fundagenics," the War on Science, Conservapedia, David Paskiewicz, Purity Balls, Idiot Pete, the War On Contraception, Christian Exodus, anti-Semitism, Pensacola Christian College . . . .

Jesus Camp, however disturbing, was not without its funny moments. In one scene, Fisher's young charges visit New Life Church, Colorado, to hear Pastor Ted Haggard preach against homosexuality. Read more!

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXII

(Blogswarm: see below fold)

The week in fundie . . .

1. Alabama Governor proclaims a week of prayer for rain. (A tactic which has worked so well for John Howard.) (Via Pharyngula)
2. C of E bishop blames floods on TEH GAY. (Nullifidian)
3. Islamic nutjob blames recent thwarted terrorist attacks on the Salman Rushdie knighting. "Is Britain longing for Al Qaeda's bombings?" You fucking tool! (Dispatches From The Culture Wars)
4. Rightwing creationist nutjob Ann Coulter gets smacked down on national television to thunderous applause. (Via Morons.org)
5. Christian Zionist nutjob: Tony Blair is not necessarily the antichrist. "Many prophecy experts believe that a future pope will be the false prophet." (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
6. Christian fundamentalist nutjobs are planning a series of "Paul Hill Days" in honour of the man who in 1994 assassinated a doctor and his escort outside an abortion clinic. Planned events include a re-enactment of the shooting. (Talk2Action)
   

On the subject of theocrats, another Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm has been planned for July 1-4, 2007. Here's what to do:

1. Post to your blog about the separation of church and state. If you want to point your readers to something they can DO about the religious right, send them to the First Freedom First website and ask them to sign the petition. First Freedom First is not a sponsor of this blogswarm, but they have been a very very helpful resource, and Blog against Theocracy would like to return the favor. You may wish to tag your post "Blog Against Theocracy."

2. send an email to

blogagainsttheocracy.july07 AT blogger DOT com

The SUBJECT LINE of your email will be the NAME of your blog. I would type for my subject, "Blue Gal". Don't use all caps or any extra lines. It won't get picked up.

The BODY of your email should have ONE thing in it: The url for your post. Blogger will turn this into a link automatically. Make sure you post the full url, including the http, etc.

I'm sorry, but that's all you're allowed to email. Longer posts will be truncated, and if they're not, BAT staff will edit them. We have to be fair to everyone participating. We'll also be watching for spam and deleting that as it arrives, so don't feel you have to email me if you see any violations or spam on the site, we'll get to it.

I've tested this system and the biggest problem is getting the darn email address correct. It's AT blogger DOT com not AT gmail DOT com. And make sure you have a period between the blogagainsttheocracy and the july07, and that you spell theocracy correctly. (even I screwed up in this post. Be aware it's july07 not jul07. See?)

You may email blogagainsttheocracy AT gmail DOT com if you have any questions or problems.

Read more!

Degayifying the Moskva

Orthodox Christian Russians were working tirelessly last Sunday to cleanse the Moskva River's sparkling waters of TEH GAY, after a dirty gay cruise vessel full of dirty gays trailed megalitres of santorum in its wake the previous evening.

Participants hired a ship and decorated it with church banners, icons, Russian imperial flags and their motto, "We are Russian, God is with us."

"Our great Orthodox capital is in spiritual vacuum and experiences ideological aggression from the West. So our aim was to demonstrate that the Russian people's spiritual and moral ideals are alive and will be so forever," Yury Ageschev, coordinator of the Union of Orthodox Brotherhoods, told Interfax.

He said one of the action's aims was "to purge the Moskva River after a large group of gays, who hired a similar ship to have a party going the same route last night."

On a more serious note, this follows a plan by Christians to conduct anti-homosexual pogroms in a Moscow park popular as a meeting place for gays and lesbians.

YouTube: Christians and homophobia
Read more!

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XXI

The week in fundie:

1. The Religious Right post-Falwell. (Americans United for the Separation of Church and State)
2. A library in South Carolina has been forced to cancel its summer programs after receiving threats and accusations that it was "promoting witchcraft." (Via Pharyngula)
   
3. Lesbians kicked off a bus for for kissing. (Via Morons.org)
4. Queensland National MP Barnaby Joyce: "If Christian people do not put their view forward that Australia is a Christian state, then within a short period of time, [. . .] another religion might fill the vacuum." (Via Unbelief.org)
5. An Italian village has opened a criminal investigation into the film version of The Da Vinci Code, in response to complaints by local clergy. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
   
6. The Exclusive Brethren cult, which bans sex ed and ICT in its own schools, is planning to sponsor one of the UK's publicly-funded "faith schools." (Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
7. Study: social dysfunction higher in America's Jesus states. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
   

Bill Maher on Jesus Camp Read more!

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XX

The week in fundie:

1. The Hawke-Clarke hijack. Alex Hawke, former leader of the Young Liberals (and, thanks to him, now dominated by its bovver-boy wing) and acolyte of ultraconservative NSW Liberal State MP David Clarke, has never made secret his long-term goal of shifting the Liberal Party to the Christian right; as far as he's concerned, party members who don't share his extremist ideology "can choose the Greens, Labor or the Democrats." Now Hawke, who opposes abortion and wants the age of consent raised for homosexuals--he considers it "a child protection issue to stop gay men preying on the young"--could well have achieved a major milestone on his agenda by securing preselection in Mitchell, one of the safest seats in the country, amid accusations by moderate Liberals of branch-stacking. (For more on what may one day come to be known as the Hawke-Clarke hijack of the Liberal Party, see this Monthly article and this Four Corners transcript.) (SMH)
   
2. Speaking of faith-based haters, Iran's government has condemned the awarding of a knighthood to author Salman Rushdie, a citizen of the UK which is not AFAIK an Islamic theocracy. According to a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, since Rushdie is an "apostate" and "one of the most hated figures in Islamic society," the knighthood constitutes an attack on Islam. What a maroon! (ABC News Online)
   
3. In Jerusalem, an Orthodox Jewish court has placed a curse on participants in Jerusalem's gay pride parade. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
4. In Australia, the fundies branch stack; in the US, they state-stack. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
5. The Pentagon has admitted it once tried to build a "Gay Bomb." You know, a bomb that would infect the enemy with TEH GAY and make them want to stop fighting and start having teh gay anal sex. Yes, I'm serious. (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
6. Seventh Day Adventist splitters World's Last Chance believe they have identified the "First Beast of Revelation" (and I could almost believe it after the Mitchell preselection ;)):
   
   
   

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Bush nominates degayification advocate as US Surgeon-General

Australia doesn't really have an equivalent of the US Surgeon-General (technically, the closest equivalent is the Chief Medical Officer). He or she is the unofficial public face of health in the US, and is generally seen as a respected and authoritative advocate of public health education and healthy living. Naturally, the Christian Right would regard getting one of their own into this position as a major coup in its quest to Talibanise America.

As the disastrous experiment with abstinence-only sex education has demonstrated (an experiment destined to continue thanks to a decision by lily-livered Democrats to increase funding for such programmes), the fundagelicals don't do health science well. But what do they care?--they're more interested in saving souls than lives, and they're not about to let reality get in the way of their Bronze Age agenda.

Regarding the office of Surgeon-General, the faith-heads have had previous success: in 1994 they forced the resignation of Jocelyn Elders after she dared to suggest the promotion of so benign an activity as masturbation as an alternative to riskier sexual practices--despite the fact that masturbation carries no harmful side effects--expect possibly chafing. (Indeed, frequent ejaculation has been found to reduce the risk of prostate cancer in men, but I guess Jesus wants you to get prostate cancer.)

But the big pay-off for the Religious Right would be to manoeuvre a kool-aid-sipping fundagelical into the position of Surgeon-General itself. And now they have a sniff of victory, thanks to the Bush administration's nomination to the post of James Holsinger, a Paul Cameron-class homophobe:

James Holsinger, President George W. Bush's nominee for Surgeon General, has a dark view of homosexuals. In a 1991 paper, Holsinger describes homosexual sex in sickeningly lurid language. "Fist fornication," "sphincter injuries," "lacerations," "perforations" and "deaths seen in connection with anal eroticism," are some of the terms Holsinger concocted to describe acts with which he suggests at least medical familiarity (a case of participant observation, perhaps?). At the same paper, Holsinger puzzlingly issues no warnings about the dangers of heterosexual sex in his paper. To him, only "anal eroticism" is a health peril.

As the Alternet article points out, what is most worrying about this nomination is not so much Holsinger's bigotry as his support for "ex-gay therapy." In other words, the individual who the Bush administration believes is best qualified to give the American public advice on healthy living is someone who believes homosexuality is both a "lifestyle choice" and a "disease" that can be "cured." Moreover, the nomination is a tacit endorsement of a therapy discredited by the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and other mainstream medical organizations. The American Psychiatric Association maintains that there is "no scientific evidence that reparative or conversion therapy is effective in changing a person's sexual orientation;" there is evidence, however, that ex-gay therapy can have harmful effects, including "depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by a patient."

Hopefully, US senators will give this snake-oil salesman the short shrift he deserves.
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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XIX

Image via Pharyngula

The week in fundie . . .

1. Moderate Liberals attempt to block Religious Right putsch in Sydney seat of Mitchell. (Brisbane Times)
2. A 16-year-old female gang-rape victim "may well have been glad of the attention," according to one of her attacker's defence lawyer. The lawyer suggested that the victim was asking for it because of her "provocative" clothing and the fact that she was overweight at the time of the assault. Incidentally, this happened in London, not Saudi Arabia. (Via Magic Bellybutton.)
3. Israeli Knesset moves to ban gay pride parades. (Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)
4. Theocracy comes to West Papua. (Via Bartholomew's Notes on Religion)
5. "The Talibanization of Iraq"--the deterioration of women's rights in the post-Saddam era. (Assyrian International News Agency)
6. Stoning defended in Iran by Judiciary Chief Advisor (National Council of Resistance of Iran)
7. Crowds stone gay rights marchers in Bucharest. (SMH)
   

Just to make it worth your while, here's Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot."

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Pell and Hickey: cult leaders without a cult

National Day of Secularism

May the 26th

What does the Catholic Church in Australia have against secularism, liberal democracy and the Enlightenment? Quite a lot, it seems, because in the last 24 hours no less than two high-ranking clergy have warned Australian Catholic politicians that if they vote in favour of expanded stem-cell research, they risk being kicked out of Benedict's gang. By now you would have heard about Sydney Archbishop Cardinal George Pell's heavying of Catholic parliamentarians in NSW who are considering voting in support of a therapeutic cloning bill currently being debated in the Lower House:

Cardinal George Pell has warned Catholic politicians they face "consequences" in the life of the church should they vote for an "immoral" bill before the NSW Parliament to expand stem cell research.

[. . .]

"These possibilities are quite grotesque and I'd be very surprised if they had approval throughout the population," he said.

"To create a human embryo for the express purpose of using it and destroying, that's the way we treat lab rats. It's totally inappropriate for human beings. It's a perverse new direction in human experimentation.

"I don't think Catholic politicians, Christian politicians or pro-life politicians who has properly informed their conscience should vote for these changes."

"Cloning is not quite the same as abortion and the legislation for such a thing as cloning is different from actually performing cloning," Dr Pell told reporters.

"But it is a serious moral matter and Catholic politicians who vote for this legislation must realise that their voting has consequences for their place in the life of the church."

As Bruce points out, Pell seems to be taking his Escriva-esque contribution to political science, what he calls "normative democracy"--"simply a case of “norms” (coincidentally parallel to church doctrine) that the state was not allowed to breach (in other words if the Church dictates against it Australia doesn’t get a say)"--to a new level. But one wonders whether Pell's acting entirely off his own bat, or in response to a memo from head office, given that this morning Perth Archbishop Barry Hickey issued his own fatwa against stemcell research. Hickey has form, of course: early last month, in response to a similar call from Pope Benedict, he declared that any doctor performing an abortion would be excluded from communion and would potentially face excommunication. Declaring that Catholics who vote for therapeutic cloning are acting against the Church's teaching, Hickey said:

"I had to speak about conscience and I would call on Catholic politicians to examine their conscience before taking communion if they supported stemcell research."

I don't want politicians Catholic or otherwise to "examine their conscience" on this issue (or any other) if it means that they stay up nights worrying about whether their sky-daddy will cast them into a lake of unquenchable fire for eternity if they disobey the orders of the Archbishop. Because, let's face it, that's insane. I want them to use one of the few opportunities they get in party political life to actually use their brains--and in the process, to tell the likes of Pell and Hickey to go fuck themselves. Fortunately, that's what they seem to be doing.

Courtesy of SMH. And too bloody right!

Let us hope, then, that Catholic school principals show as much backbone. As Mikey blogged a few days ago, earlier in the week Pell proclaimed that school principals in his archdiocese would have to take an "oath of fidelity" regarding Church teaching on homosexuality, birth control, and the ordination of women:

In a first for the Australian church, the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, is set to extend the oath of fidelity and profession of faith, a requirement of church law for bishops, priests and heads of seminaries, to all senior educational leaders.
The oath demands "religious submission of intellect and will" on questions of faith and morals - even if these are inferred but not defined by the pope and his bishops - and an acceptance that everything solemnly taught by church tradition is divinely inspired.
It suggests they would be bound not only to impart these teachings but to live by them. [Emphasis added]

Religious submission of intellect and will? Can I just suggest, to any principal who is seriously considering "submitting his or her intellect and will" to the sky-daddy's representatives on Earth, that you don't deserve to be at the helm of an educational institution in the 21st century? Perhaps management training at McDonalds is more your speed, because schools (real schools, that is) are supposed to develop in students the ability to think and to reason for themselves, not to transform them into mindless religious automatons.

Indeed, Pell seems to be taking cue from Jerry Falwell. Just look at what he has in store for those poor students whose parents are fool enough to believe that five to twelve in the Catholic education system will magically transform their little darlings into model citizens:

Among its other new measures are marriage preparation classes for senior secondary school students, twice-yearly reviews of its educational bodies, and forums so Catholic politicians can be updated on church teachings.
There will also be renewed efforts to teach youth about "sexuality and life issues" through formal courses and seminars, and measures to bring in to the fold young people inspired by next year's World Youth Day.
Cardinal Pell has taken an intense interest in Catholic education, ordering the rewriting of the religious education curriculum, and aiming to turn around Catholic thinking that faith is caught, not taught.

Sorry: that's not a school, it's a madrassa. All this talk about getting values back into the classroom . . . when did education stop being a value?

In the end, though, you have to laugh at these gentlemen who have been so cloistered from reality that they appear to think this is the eleventh century, there's still a Great Chain of Being and the secular powers still defer to religious authority unquestioningly. Unfortunately for them, most Australians, and indeed many Catholics, have voted with their feet on abortion, birth control, women's rights, gay rights and stem cell research. Pell and Hickey and cult leaders without a cult.

See also Ninglun's post
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The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XVIII

The week in fundie:

1. Homophobic street preacher whines about hypocrisy because he has been refused permission to march in a gay pride parade. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Incidentally, the WorldNetDaily article detailing the poor oppressed anti-gay activist's plight refers to said gay pride parade as a "gay" pride parade. Why the scare quotes? Are the participants not gay? Are they only pretending to be gay? Why do wingnuts do this? Are they stupid or something?)
2. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, ultra-Orthodox Jews are threatening violence against this year's gay pride parade, having acted upon similar threats in previous years. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
3. And if you happen to be gay--or even if you're accused of being gay--in post-Saddam Iraq, it significantly increases your chances of being shot, burned and/or beheaded by Shi'a fundamentalist death squads. (Via uruknet) (Warning: follow the links at your own risk--they contain images that are definitely NSFW.) Isn't faith a wonderful thing?
   
4. Over in Pakistan, a Christian man has been sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Mohammed. (Via Richard Dawkins.net)
5. Confused by "NOMA?" US Republican Presidential candidate Sam Brownback unpacks it for you in an op-ed for the New York Times. The way to balance science and faith is to cherry-pick those elements of science which are consonant with your religious ideology (or could be interpreted to be so); if it doesn't agree with your religious presuppositions, you simply write it off as "atheistic theology posing as science." Simple, no? (Richard Dawkins.net) (More info. on the science-friendly Brownback campaign in this post)
6. New Zealand is set to get its own version of Ken Ham's Creation Museum. (Via Pharyngula)
7. Why some people resist science (Via Pharyngula)
   

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Beating up gays: it's what Jesus would do

The man in the photo above about to throw a punch at gay rights activist Peter Tatchell is, like those in crowd around him, an Orthodox Christian. He has turned up to protest against a small demonstration by gay rights activists--who are themselves peacefully protesting against the refusal of the Mayor of Moscow to allow a gay rights march--and he chooses to express his faith by beating up a man who has not threatened him in any way, and whose only crime appears to be that he is gay. Tatchell's assailant is motivated by faith-based hatred. And what I would like to know is this--what does he hate more: the "sin," or the "sinner?" Because it's really difficult to tell from the picture.

Regarding the bashings, it is only fair to point out that Orthodox Christians were not alone among the perpetrators--neo-Nazis and nationalists were also involved. Mindless homophobia makes for some interesting alliances. (And the Moscow police never lifted a finger against the homophobes, and instead threw their victims into jail. State-sponsored Christofascism.)

It is also only fair to point out that homosexuals have never really fared well in Russia: pre-revolutionary socialists saw them as symbols of capitalist decadence; and in the Soviet Union, homosexuals faced five years hard labour and mandatory "reparative therapy" (a technique favoured, incidentally, by many a god-fearing, bible-believing Christian in America). The post-Soviet era merely witnessed the replacement of one state church, Communism, with another: Orthodoxy; consequently, it has witnessed the replacement of an ideological justification for homophobia with a theological justification.

Unfortunately, as Tatchell himself notes in a recent Guardian piece, these events are not unique to Moscow:

Across much of the former Soviet empire, gay rights are one of the main battlegrounds of the struggle between liberty and authoritarianism. Hungary and the Czech Republic are two rare examples of ex-communist states that have made the transition from tyranny to democracy and, in large measure, embraced gay human rights. In Russia, Latvia, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania and Moldova, however, the situation is very different. Freedom of expression and the rights of sexual minorities are still hedged with restrictions.

In these countries, unreconstructed puritan communists have joined forces with ultra-nationalists, neo-Nazis and religious fundamentalists to orchestrate a homophobic backlash against the claims of their lesbian and gay citizens for equal rights and non-discrimination. The issue that has ignited this backlash is the refusal of gay people to remain in the shadows, invisible and ashamed. Their out and proud claim on public space and for the right to protest has prompted the banning of Gay Pride marches, from Riga in the west to Moscow in the east.

These bans are much more than an attack on gay and lesbian people. They are a full-scale resistance to moves towards modernity, tolerance, progress and human rights. Gay people are the target and symbol. But it is freedom of expression itself, and the right to dissent, that is being quashed.

Poland, for instance, is led by a coalition of rabidly homophobic conservative parties. A senior member of one of them, The League of Polish Families' Wojciech Wierzejski, was quoted as saying, in response to the 2006 gay rights parade in Warsaw, that "if deviants begin to demonstrate, they should be hit with batons." At other gay rights parades in the country marchers have been pelted with eggs and beaten by the good citizenry. A government-appointed children's television watchdog is currently investigating whether the Teletubby Tinky Winky is homosexual. Recently, Education Minister Roman Giertych, also a member of the The League of Polish Families, called for a ban on "the propagation of homosexuality" in Poland's schools. Giertych is affiliated with the neo-Nazi All-Polish Youth, whose members at counter-demonstrations in 2005 declared: "We’ll do to you what Hitler did with Jews."

All this nastiness, of course, has to be seen in the context of the war on secularism being waged by Europe's religious leaders, particularly Pope Benedict. According to an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune,

Benedict's religious alternative is not some form of theocratic absolutism. On the contrary, the Pope is a staunch defender of secularity — the separation of church and state. Benedict wants to disentangle the church from the state, but without divorcing religion from politics, because only a religion freed from subservience to the state can save modern culture from itself.

Evidently, "saving modern culture from itself" involves re-asserting Bronze Age views on sexuality and fostering a society in which people have to live in fear because of their sexual orientation.

See also: Dispatches from the Culture Wars and Lines from a Floating Life. Read more!

The Wonderful World of Magical Thinking XVII

The week in fundie:

1. US military discharges 58 Arab linguists for being gay. What's that line from Apocalypse Now? "The war's being run by four-star clowns who are going to wind up giving the whole circus away." (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
2. Eighth-grade student proves creationism with Epsom salts and wins Christian school science fair. It need not be pointed out to my intelligent readers, surely, that the real idiot in this tale is not the kid but the "science teacher" who bestowed the award. (via Pharyngula)
3. "Dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark"--introducing Ken Ham's Creation Museum. (Found this in the "Offbeat" section of ABC News Online--further evidence of Aunty's leftist Darwinist bias)
4. How to smack down Scientologists (and other purveyors of woo) (Richard Dawkins.net)
   

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