You’re Misunderstanding The Freedom Of Religion

Apparently, there are social conservatives who have managed to turn the Constitution’s First Amendment promise of a Freedom of Religion into the Freedom To Get Whatever Policies We Want Whenever We Want. You can read this egregious misunderstanding here. The essence of the claim is simple enough: if laws are passed allow for things that (Some) Christians don’t personally approve of, they then are the victims of an infringement upon their religious beliefs.

And so we end up with the ludicrous claim that by allowing gay marriage, you have somehow infringed upon the religious freedoms of those who oppose gay marriage. This is obviously stupid, but it didn’t stop the National Review from claiming precisely that. Here’s the money quote (which is burning up the internet today):

Given their cavalier disregard for the freedom of conscience, it’s little surprise that the gay lobby is equally disdainful of democracy: They began pursuing legal challenges to Proposition 8 practically before they were done tallying the votes. Lamentably, the state attorney general defending the will of the people will be former Jerry Brown, the liberal former governor who was an open opponent of the measure and tried to sabotage it. The legal challenges will be heard by the same state Supreme Court that overturned California’s previous law forbidding gay marriage back in May. There’s a real possibility the will of the people will be spurned a second time, democracy be damned. They’ve already burned the Book of Mormon. The First Amendment is next.

There is a lot to respond to in that concluding paragraph. For example, it is a bit much to claim that the gay lobby is disdainful of democracy when every democratic mechanism that had previously allowed for gay marriage in California was described as being, at best, fascistic. Second, there’s no evidence that the people who burned the Book of Mormon did so because of gay issues…seriously:

Last week in a Denver suburb, someone lit a Book of Mormon on fire and dropped it on the doorstep of a Mormon temple, presumably as a statement about the church’s support of Proposition 8 in California, an initiative that amended the state constitution to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

I went ahead and bolded the important word there. Third, what the editors mean by the First Amendment being “next,” is merely that gays are campaigning for something that (Some) Christians don’t approve of. But (Some) Christians aren’t being oppressed if they don’t get their way. The only thing that would happen if Proposition 8 were to be overturned is that these (Some) Christians wouldn’t be getting their way. You’ll excuse me if I don’t shed tears for the people hellbent on gay oppression losing.

American Family Association Demonizes Gays, Loses Voters

The American Family Association is worth supporting, because it’s one of the only American organizations focused on the real threat facing our nation: the homosexuals, their agenda, and their plan to take over your town. In case you’re not taking this threat seriously, read this:

Residents of the small Arkansas town of Eureka Springs noticed the homosexual community was growing. But they felt no threat. They went about their business as usual. Then, one day, they woke up to discover that their beloved Eureka Springs, a community which was known far and wide as a center for Christian entertainment–had changed. The City Council had been taken over by a small group of homosexual activists.

The Eureka Springs they knew is gone. It is now a national hub for homosexuals. Eureka Springs is becoming the San Francisco of Arkansas. The story of how this happened is told in the new AFA DVD “They’re Coming To Your Town.”

One of the first actions of the homosexual controlled City Council was to offer a “registry” where homosexuals could register their unofficial “marriage.” City Council member Joyce Zeller said the city will now be promoted, not as a Christian resort, but a city “selling peace, relaxation, history and sex.”

AFA’s “They’re Coming ToYour Town” documents the story of how and why this happened. And how homosexual activists plan to do the same in other towns.

That’s right - gays snuck out of the woods one night, overthrew a town, and turned it into the San Francisco of Arkansas. And they’re coming for you next. So stop worrying about threats like Islamist terrorists; the real threat is that guy down the street who has a really nicely maintained home, and the woman a few blocks over who’s a hell of a softball player.

Predictably, something this utterly stupid is absolutely burning up the internet today, and the concensus response seems to be twofold:

1. These people are idiots.
2. These people are marginalizing themselves and their political goals by tying conservatism and Republicanism to what amounts to nothing more than rabid gay hatred.

I obviously agree with 1. And 2? Americans are insular, and protective, and sometimes, we act like total morons, but eventually the right people win. The same people today who publish this kind of video were telling us fifty years ago that interracial marriage was an abombination, a hundred years ago that women voting was an abombination, and a hundred and fifty years ago that slavery was a very good idea. To put that another way, Kevin Drum argues about the fundamental damage that this socially conservative extremism is doing to the Republican/conservative brand:

There will always be plenty of votes for a culturally conservative party. That’s not the problem. The problem is the venomous, spittle-flecked, hardcore cultural conservatism that’s become the public face of the evangelical wing of the GOP. It’s the wing that doesn’t just support more stringent immigration laws, but that turns the issue into a hate fest against La Raza, losing 3 million Latino votes in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just a little skittish about gay marriage, but that turns homophobia into a virtual litmus test, losing 6 million young voters in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just religious, but that treats belief as a precondition to righteousness, losing 2 million secular voters in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just nostalgic for old traditions, but that fetishizes the heartland as the only real America, losing 7 million urban voters in the process. It’s the wing that goes into a legislative frenzy over Terry Schiavo but six months later can barely rouse itself into more than a yawn over the destruction of New Orleans.

You’d think numbers like that would concern the party; you’d think numbers like that might compel the party to change course. You’d be right. Maybe not immediately, but as the Republican party continues to have less and less to do with small governments that don’t leave you alone, and more to do with massive governments that manage every aspect of your private life, they’re going to be progressively marginalized by American voters, especially if all the party is capable of doing is demonizing very small minorities for no good reason.

Mormons Ask For Sympathy

Excuse me for being incredulous, but are California Mormons actually portraying themselves as the victim in the state’s Proposition 8 debate? Judging from the nonsense included in this article, it would seem that they’re determined to try. For example, this:

Many Mormons believe they are being unfairly targeted and compare the anti-Mormon sentiment to a witch hunt…”This is not fair – a lot of people wanted this passed, not just Mormons,” said Lynnette Black of Sacramento who rallied in support of Eckern in front of Music Circus last week. “We (church members) worked hard and within the law. It’s very hard to see this attitude toward Mormons.”

Frankly Lynnette Black, go straight to hell. It doesn’t matter if you’re working within the law if your goal is the disenfranchisement of other citizens, merely for the alleged crime of not adopting your specific beliefs. (Beliefs, mind you, that were endorsing polygamy as recently as 140 years ago.) Now, as for this nonsense about it being unfair that Mormons are being targeted for their despicable anti-gay hatred, remember that no gay is seriously proposing genuine legal retribution be visited upon Mormons. As opposed to, oh I don’t know, the damned Mormons who just contributed $20 million to write legal disenfranchisement into the Californian constitution.

It isn’t just Mormons, of course. Christianity has really adopted this notion that its being persecuted in America. Visit the predominant social conservative websites, and you’ll see the ever implicit, and occasionally explicit, idea that Christians are somehow an endangered species. Doesn’t matter that almost every member of every elected body in the United States is a Christian; doesn’t matter that we’ve had an unbroken string of Christian presidents for this nation’s entire existence, or that the vast majority of judges and police are Christian. To hear Christians tell it, they’re barely keeping their heads above water in the massive wave of repression being visited upon them here in America.

This is news to Chinese Christians or Sudanese Christians, who are risking jail or death to believe as they do. But of course, American Christians are rarely, if ever, consistent on anything (other than their hatred of gays). And now Mormons are adopting the same absurdist nonsense, despite having an entire state to themselves, despite a despicable record of racial relations, and a horrifying history of endorsed polygamy. To believe these idiots, it is unfair that gays would aim their animus toward them, because all they did was contribute half the budget of the pro-Proposition 8 advocacy, and did so at the direct instruction of their church. That Mormons would insist that they’ve done nothing wrong is outrageous.

Again, it is worth noting that Mormons actively campaigned to deny fellow citizens legal protection. Gays are merely pissed at Mormons. Any reasonable person would side with the gays against the Mormons, because the gays aren’t proposing genuine legal retribution that makes a Mormon a second class citizen in his own home.

I. Love. The. Religious.

They’re so particularly adorable when they’re busy suggesting that it is impossible to know good if you aren’t religious. Or to quote the awful American Family Association’s Tom Wildmon:

“How do we define ‘good’ if we don’t believe in God?”

Yes, because knowing good from evil is impossible without regularly reading the insane rantings of men at much as 2000 years old filtered through an endless number of translations which has left us with the version of Christianity that even Christians can’t agree upon. It would be one thing if Christians could at least agree amongst themselves upon the book’s interpretation, but take five Christians and you can only guarantee that you’ll have five different interpretations of the Bible.

It’s the presumption of the religious that is so irritating, as the above quote makes clear. To assume that I can’t tell the difference between acts, that I cannot rank order behaviors in my head because of my total lack of interest in the Bible; it’s really a shocking allegation that is breathtaking in its utter rudeness. But of course, these particularly insulting Christians are the same ones who claim that they can love gays while systematically denying gays any legal protections, so it’s pretty clear that their connection to reality is tenuous at best.

Cue the following, “It was clear that their connection to reality was tenuous when they started believing the Bible in the first place.” I’m not necessarily interested in that, although quote’s like Wildmon’s make it easier for me to be.

Two Christians Talking About Gay Marriage

The first Christian says, “We need to do something about the threat of gay marriage.”

The second Christian says, “I agree, but what?”

The first Christian says, “I don’t know.”

The second Christian says, “Well if we do the American thing?”

The first Christian says, “What’s that?”

The second Christian says, “We start a movement. We start it from our congregation. Every available second that we have, we head out into the community, finding our homosexual brothers and sisters. We preach to them about the need to ignore their sexuality. We explain that it is a test from God, and one that they have to pass if they want access to heaven. We do everything in our power to convince these homosexuals that they shouldn’t make the decision to be actively homosexual. We accept the fact that we probably can’t reach everybody, but we hope to overwhelm the ones we can reach with Christian reason, and we hope that they’ll see the errors of their ways and shun their homosexuality.”

The second Christian continues, “We hope that this becomes a local movement, with other churches reaching out to those same homosexual citizens and convincing them to stay away from their sexuality. We hope that the movement spreads throughout the county, and the state, and maybe then the nation. Christians everywhere can reach out to their homosexual brothers and sisters and lovingly tell them how they’re not following God’s will. We work ceaselessly to convince these homosexuals to ignore their own urges. We understand that the fight will never end, and we commit our lives to this important movement.”

The first Christian says, “Well yeah, but what if we get the government to do all of our work for us by oppressing homosexuals via legal exclusion from institutions that we ourselves enjoy?”

The second Christian says, “Oh, that’s much easier. Let’s just do that. That way, we don’t have to work hard, or convince anybody of anything.”

Gay Marriage Problems In California

Dear (Some) Christians,

Apparently, you are now winning in California, and your heroic efforts to keep gay people from getting married (despite a legislature and a state Supreme Court that you chose saying otherwise) are on track. Now, with all due respect: go fuck yourselves.

The arrogance it takes to insert yourselves into lives of other citizens and demand that legal contracts both agreed to be nullified is an arrogance that I cannot believe. Your Bible, which you claim is important to you, features a man (Jesus Christ) who never once got as angry about anything as you routinely do about the mere existence of homosexuals, whom you believe to be the worst people on Earth. Despite a dogmatic reality that you are all fallen sinners, you look at gays and see them as a little more fallen and insist that they be treated as such.

Meanwhile, your own marriages collapse in some of the highest numbers amongst demographic groups ever witnessed in the United States, but you don’t fix that institution. Straights everywhere are allowed to marry-and-divorce, marry-and-divorce, marry-and-divorce, but you do not stand aligned against them, and the damage that such frequent marriages must certainly do to the institution.

And then you hide beyond your outrageously stupid justifications for opposing gay marriage, claiming that it isn’t yet time (when will it be?), or that we shouldn’t threaten an already endangered institution (meaning you’ll keep the right for yourself, but refuse it to everybody else), or merely that gays are less than straights and should be treated as such. But you’ll never admit the real reason you feel so steadfastly about homosexuality: you hate gay people.

It is only hate that could lead a reasonable person with a disagreement to demand the dissolution of another person’s marriage. It is only hate that could lead a reasonable person with a disagreement to demand second-class citizenship for another person. It is only hate that could lead a reasonable person with a disagreement to ostracize and demonize and criminalize a person merely for the sex they have with another person.

What in the hell is wrong with you people? What in the hell is wrong with living-and-let-live? What in the hell is wrong with taking care of your own homes before you propose to fix everybody else’s? The audacity of the gay-hating movement is enough to shake any reasonable person to their core, and yet these people are winning. We can hope that they’ll lose, but it’ll probably take more than that.

Economy Problem Figured Out: Gays

Want to know who (Some) Christians believe has caused the economy’s problems? You got it: gays.

Honestly, (Some) Christians are just possessed by homosexuality. It has gotten to the point that these people spend more time thinking about homosexuality than bona-fide homosexuals do. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

(Thanks Josh!)

A WABI? (Special Rules For Christians)

Hey, I podcasted again. Woo hoo! The podcast’s topic: Christians who want special laws written only for them.

Potentially big news coming for the podcast. Also, I need a new hosting site for my podcasts. Any suggestions?

Christian Pastors Challenge IRS

My relationship with religion is…umm…strained…or any religion for that matter. So of course I am excited to see that Christian preachers, incensed that they’re not allowed to talk politics in pulpit because of their tax exemption from the IRS, challenging the law that they describe as unfair.

Here’s the thing: these idiots have every right to endorse candidates from the pulpit and are welcome to do so, as long as they don’t mind paying taxes. The IRS offers tax-free exemptions to charitable organizations that do not engage in political endorsement. See, here’s the law. So these pastors can decide: pay taxes and talk politics, or don’t pay taxes and don’t talk politics.

That isn’t confusing.

Still, these preachers, led by Jody Hice, are being relatively insistent, which leaves me wondering what it is exactly that these people want. Because when it comes to an issue like gay marriage, Jody Hice has no problem being a dick and taking the usual Christian position: that allowing gays to marry their partners is akin to a “special” right. (Ignore, for a moment, the fact that including gays in marriage merely allows them to marry their partners, same as straights get, and that both gays and straights would be allowed to marry whomever they loved; in other words, it isn’t a special right, because everybody would have access to it.)

But apparently in this particular case, his own demand - that pastors being given a tax-free exemption despite breaking the law - doesn’t amount to the granting of a “special right” because…well…Jody Hice says so. And here again we have (Some) Christians demanding legal protections for only themselves (for example, “Christian Pharmacists Protecting From Filling Prescriptions for Contraceptives!“) while decrying the idea that anybody else would receive what they describe as “special” rights. (Even though, as we already discussed, being allowed into a deal that everybody else is already in on isn’t special anything; it’s inclusive.)

You ask me as somebody agnostic to respect religious peoples - I agree. You ask me not to interfere in their day to day lives - I agree. You ask me to ignore their logical inconsistencies - I agree. How much more can you ask of me, when we, in return, are allowed to ask nothing of the religious? We can’t ask them to tolerate that which they do not like. We can’t ask them to leave the praying and preaching in the church. We can’t ask them to leave us the hell alone in our own homes. We can’t ask them to live and let live. We can’t ask them to shut the fuck up.

Well what the hell? Pick one, or pick the other. The Jody Hices of the world want the freedom to do whatever they want, whenever they want, with no restrictions of any kind, and in return, they don’t promise to advocate the same sort of freedom for anybody else; rather, they seek to impose draconian restrictions on everybody else. It’s absolutely ridiculous, and it undermines Christianity’s appeal across the board. Here’s hoping the IRS takes Hice to court, bankrupts his stupid little church, and jails him forever. Then he can be the martyr he claims to represent, if he’s only actually a pale, spiteful shadow.

Respecting Religion (Sarah Palin Hates Witches)

I feel like I need to lead with this: I have religious friends. The only reason that somebody leads with this is that they’re attempting to establish their bonafides before they launch a full bore assault into something. This technique is popularized by conservatives who say things like, “I have gay friends and family…gay sex is the same as bestiality.” So I admit that what I’m about to do probably isn’t appropriate:

Sarah Palin has had herself protected from witchcraft.

This is an actual news story, and if you look around on the intertubes, you’ll find actual footage of Palin doing something ceremonial that will allegedly protect her from witchcraft. I have friends who are atheists, and they are always appalled by any sort of religious expression - “Catholics are eating Jesus Christ? What the hell kind of nonsense is that?” Generally, I like to hold back in those conversations, because yes, that sort of thing is strange to me, but taking communion really seems to mean something to Catholics. Why fight a fight not worth fighting?

But witchcraft? Seriously? This?

Look, I think I’m relatively respectful about religion. I may not believe, but not only do I denounce the absurdity of atheists who act just like fundamentalist Christians, I also suggest that we leave people alone to their beliefs.

But again, witchcraft? Does Palin genuinely believe that the woman down the street is putting on a pointy hat, getting on a broom, and threatening her well-being? She can’t, right? Please? Pretty please? The notion that Jesus walked amongst humanity is strange enough to me, and that when we die, God decided if we’re bound for heaven or hell. I draw the line at the idea that there are actual witches posing an actual threat to…anybody.

If that’s offensive to the people that believe in witches, I refuse to apologize. It’s fucking ridiculous. A reasonable, tolerant man can only handle so much, and its witches. That’s my breaking point.