Clamour Underbridge

Stephen Fry, "The Catholic Church is not a force for good in the world."

I am conflicted about this.  See what you think. 

The Intelligence² Debate - Stephen Fry (Unedited)
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Must we talk about shame?

For shame deny that thou bear’st love to any.
William Shakespeare.  Sonnet X

Must we talk about shame during Pride?  Pride, Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender-Queer-Questioning-Allied-or Other, is all about knowing who we are, what we want and taking stock of our accomplishments (or lack there of) along the way.  Shame, however, is what some groups want to serve up anytime gay people get mentioned.  While most of us are having Pride month those wonderful people in the “nobody’s actually gay” or the “normal people aren’t gay”  or the “I’m a used-to-be homosexual and you can be one too”  movement are dishing out the shame and the guilt.  There are all kind of places you can go around Louisville or on the web to get a walloping dose.  I advise you to leave these folks alone, let them get on with their angst-ridden lives and be sure to point them out as the damaging, psycho-babble charlatans they actually are. 

Let’s start with Southeast Christian Church.  If you go to their website and search for homosexuality you will find their relationships/care ministries.  You see, at Southeast Christian Church, homosexuality is a disease.  You “recover” from homosexuality.  You’ll find, on their website, a quote from Bob Davies and his book When a Loved One Says, “I’m Gay.”   Since Bob Davies’ work is published by Focus on the Family you know it’s going to ignore most, if not all, of science, medicine and modern thought.  There’s a Women’s Group that “helps” you overcome “unwanted same-sex attraction and relationships.”  Change is Possible! Give me a break.  Southeast provides “helpful” links to dubious and oft-debunked “agents of change” such as Exodus International, Troubledwith (A Focus on the Family site), NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality), New Direction Ministries of Canada (that link is broken BTW), Regen Books (another broken link and actually Exodus Books), Desert Stream, and Exodus Youth.  One and all a cock-and-bull (irony much?) collection of psychologically damaging and professionally disparaged gaggle of life destroying drek that does a great deal of harm and absolutely no good.  Southeast Christian and their recovery programs are all about the shame.  Get it while it’s hot and steaming. 

Then there’s Sojourner Church.  Their website is a little less blatant in the shame and guilt, ex-gay BS but still cleaving to the some tired old ox trail.  Sojourner’s Women’s Ministry is very well connected to the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) brought to you by the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  Since CBMW is all about opposing feminist egalitarianism and other “errors” of modern thought you can bet they buy into the whole “ex-gay,”  “homosexuality is a disease,”  “there is only one sexual orientation” pack of untruths.  CBMW exists to stamp out “confusion” in the church (you know, the one holy absolutely not Catholic and by no means apostolic one) and bring an end to “acceptance of homosexuality,”  the “secular homosexual” influence on theology as well as “confusion…regarding maleness and femaleness.”  Oh yeah.  They’ve got the guilt and shame train coming in right on time.

The “desperately seeking rigid and coercive gender roles” crowd will do you wrong every time.  Trust me I’ve been there.  Don’t fall for it.  If you want to make a change then chose to be Proud.  You have only your shame to loose.

Don't say gay--on Amazon.com

Michelle at http://michelelee.net/blog/ brought this to my attention.  You should check out her coverage as well. 

Following in the footsteps of Representative Stacey Campfield of Knoxville, Tennessee, the powers-that-be at Amazon.com have decided that gay people are dirty and need to be stricken from the record.  "Don't say gay"  was a bad bill for the Tennessee state house and it's a bad policy for Amazon.com.  Towleroad and Pam's House Blend are following the story closely.  They are much better at tracking hot news item than your humble clamour.

That's not to say I don't have an opinion. 

There is no caste system (officially) in the US.  Yet there are repeated attempts by religiously motivated bigots and other groups that would prefer gay people (and lesbian, trans, bi, queer and questioning folk and probably their allies) disappear off the face of the earth to turn GLBT people into low caste  Untouchables (I think the word is Dalit but I need to verify that) in the US legal and social system.  Campfield's "Don't say Gay"  bill, NOM's scary (but funny) ad that uses HS film class special effects and tries to implant the meme that rights for some are threatened by rights for all and lumping anything with gay characters, gay content or gay focus in with "the porn."  Because, you know, if you're gay it's all about sex and nothing else. 

This has got to stop.  Gay marriage is OK (and legal) in many entire countries and some US states.  I think we'd be better off with federal civil unions and leaving marriage to churches (my church performs gay marriages) but that's a different article.  A gay character in a story does not automoatically mean the story is porn or even erotica.  The drive to marginalize the GLBT community by bigots that use religion as their cover story is having an unintended effect.  It's marginalizing them and creating a climate where religion is once again being equated with superstition and rigidity at a time when a faith perspective is crucial to maintaining balance and connection in a complex and overwhelming world.  The misuse of religion by people like The Most Rev. Peter Akinola (Anglican bishop of Nigeria) and Scott Lively (blame the Holocaust on homosexuality) while other believers stand idly by and let them get away with it is damaging religion in general and Christianity in particular.   

Equal Opportunity Haters: The Short List

“God Hates Fags”gets all the press but Westboro Baptist Church and Fred Phelps are not the only anti-gay hate groups out there.  The Southern Poverty Law Center (http://www.splcenter.org/index.jsp) has compiled a list of eleven groups, including Westboro, who excel at slander, fabrication and hysterical homophobia.  Here’s the list.      

Traditional Values Coalition  http://www.traditionalvalues.org/

Abiding Truth Ministries http://www.abidingtruth.com/

Chalcedon Foundation http://www.chalcedon.edu/

Family Research Institute http://www.familyresearchinst.org/

American Vision http://www.americanvision.org/

Illinois Family Institute http://www.illinoisfamily.org/

Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment http://www.home60515.com/

Westboro Baptist Church http://www.godhatesfags.com/

The School of Christian Activism http://ngteam.org/index.htm (in Russian)

Mass Resistance http://www.massresistance.org/

Watchmen on the Walls http://www.watchmenonthewalls.com/

Why should you care?  It’s not like venom, spleen and rumblings from bigots is new news.  I’ll tell you.  You should care because other groups, groups that don’t make the hate groups list, use publications and information from the Hateful 11.  

Right here in Kentucky we have C.R.A.V.E. (Christians Reviving America's Values http://www.christians4america.com/index.htm) and their Pastor Don Swarthout in Lexington.  They work with Abiding Truth Ministries.  And then there’s my personal favorite, Answers in Genesis (http://www.answersingenesis.org/), the creationism museum in Boone County.  Evidently staff trades between Answers in Genesis and American Vision are routine.

You should also care because groups like the American Family Association of Kentucky, that’s the notorious Frank Simon MD’s group (http://www.afaky.com/ ) and the Family Foundation of Kentucky (Kent Ostrander, Martin Cothran, David Edmunds, et al. http://www.kentuckyfamily.org/ ) routinely spout the lies and distortions of the Hateful 11, often without attribution, in order to sell their bill of goods.  It’s all snake oil mixed with a little bait and switch. 

What can you do? 

First, when you hear these groups cited point out that they’re extremist hate groups.  No one considers the KKK “just another opinion” when issues of race, ethnicity or religion are being discussed.  Yet lobbyists for anti-gay legislation such as the amendment to the Kentucky consitution defining marriage and the recently defeated No Gay Foster Parents bill will use Scott Lively (Watchmen on the Walls and the Center for Christian Activism) and his truly excrebable tome Seven Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child: A Parent's Guide to Protecting Children from Homosexuality and the "Gay" Movement as well as Paul Cameron’s (Family Research Institute) discredited and mostly fabricated “research” to give lobbyists and legislators cover when they spout hair-raising bigotry.    

Second, don’t get trapped into trying to rebutt arguments rooted in hate.  You can’t discuss creationism rationally with the Answers in Genesis or the Flat Earth Society (http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/).  NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality,  http://www.narth.com/index.html) doesn’t care that “gender disorientation pathology” is a fiction that has never appeared in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association.  It’s useful when there’s gay bashing to be done.    

Third, if NAMBLA is mentioned it’s already to late.  There is nothing that can be done or said that will derail a bigot once they land in pedophilia territory.  The fact that the vast majority of abusers are heterosexual makes no difference.  Smile stiffly and walk away.

Anonymous Satanism

God does not hear my prayers.  That’s the word from a particular Southern Baptist believer who informed me that it was important that I sit down and listen to his witness.  When I checked The Baptist Faith and Message after the fact I discovered a few discrepancies from my witness’ testimony but who am I to dispute an expert. 

 

I also plan to keep on praying.  As a matter of fact, I’m a professional pray-er.  The divine ones hear my prayers just like always.  They haven’t checked The Baptist Faith and Message either.  But according to my witnesser my prayers are being spoofed. 

 

Spoofing is something that happens to email.  It’s part of the junk mail and spam phenomena.  An email arrives in your mailbox that seems to be from a friend or perhaps your church.  Surprise!  The email is actually from someone who knows all the secrets of increasing your breast size, penis length, disposable income or stock portfolio.  Face to face this is referred to as bait and switch.  In the world of computers, emails and prayers, it’s called spoofing.   

 

It was explained to me like this.  Since I am not a Christian there is no chance that god listens to me unless I am repenting.  A few observations from my perspective--the god being discussed is, of course, the jealous god and the Christianity of my witnesser is practiced by the scrupulous and self-elected set.  To me it seems this particular clique of Christians worships the Bible and has very little use for Jesus except as a human sacrifice and the agent of their get-out-of-hell-free insurance policy.  I also wondered how the “this is a prayer of repentance” determination gets made.  Maybe somebeing is reading prayer subject lines as well as rerouting their destination addresses.   

 

Then it gets even better.  I was told that not only am I not a Christian but I’m actually a Satanist, an anonymous Satanist.  Believe it or not, this is one of those times when being gay has nothing to do with it.  My prayers are being diverted to the in-basket of the devil.  As a matter of fact, all the goddesses and gods are just the devil in disguise.  Color me incredulous. 

 

Even though the jealous god is supposedly all powerful, all knowing and present everywhere at all times he has given his cast-out chief of staff, Satan, the power to hear and answer all the prayers of those of us who don’t grovel properly, read the Bible the proscribed way and follow the “Jesus is a human sacrifice” line.  That devil really has the inside line on the world and billions of people. 

 

The flip side of anonymous Satanism is anonymous Christianity.  Father Karl Rahner, SJ proposed the theory of anonymous Christianity way back in 1966.  Father Karl said “I hold if everyone depends upon Jesus Christ for salvation, and if at the same time I hold that many live in the world who have not expressly recognized Jesus Christ, then there remains in my opinion nothing else but to take up this postulate of an anonymous Christianity.”  I would prefer to be neither an anonymous Christian nor an anonymous Satanist but it seems my feelings on the issue just don’t matter. 

 

The jealous god is not the only divine one.  He is one of many goddesses and gods that love and care for the world and its peoples.  I pray to exactly whom I intend to pray and whether or not my prayer is heard depends on me and those numbered among the divine.  The jealous god gets one vote and I tend not to talk to him much anyway.  Incidentally, it takes a lot more faith than I have to believe in Satan’s power and might in the same way as my witnesser.  Nevertheless, Lucifer is not in the prayer spoofing business nor does he creep hither, thither and yon impersonating other deities and gleefully leading the faithful of other religions down the road of perdition.  He’s quite busy enough pestering the jealous god about Job and other faithful believers.

A Scientist discusses religion

My google news reader served me a very interesting blog post today from the Gene Expression blog.  The author is named Razib.  I couldn't find an author bio on the blog.  Regardless, it's a very interesting and thoughtful post.  What do you think. 

How I view Religion by Razib

A lot of comments have revolved around whether I am a Post-Modernist when it comes to the definition of religion. This post is to make explicit and clarify my own position so I don't have to waste so much time in the comments. Most readers can therefore ignore this and wait until I go back to posting on genetics or something more interesting! :-)

One model of religion goes like so:

Axiom (e.g., One must follow all 612 commandments) → Entails → Entails → Specific belief and practice

In other words, there is a contingent relationship between the initial set of beliefs, and the elaborated set of religious practices and beliefs which are subsequent to "primitive" and "core" assertions. In other words, the space of states which religious phenomena inhabit is tightly constrained and guided by a simple set of principles and ideas from which the rest follows.

To a great extent many religious people might accept this as an accurate description of their faith; defined as it is by a belief in a particular god, a particular creed, and a systematic theology, etc. The average religious person might not be able to master the details of a particular theology, but they accept its validity, and accept the guidance of religious elites who are masters of said theology. These elites then serve as the executors or implementers of a set of logical consequences which emerge plainly from the propositions clearly derivable from first principles.

In this conception religious texts and theologies serve as blueprints. Religion as it is simply serves to reflect the nature of that blueprint. Therefore, to understand a particular religion you simply go to the religious texts, and see what those texts say. That will be a reasonable approximate, model if you will, of religion as it is practiced.

Texts and theologies serve therefore as the theoretical framework. To test the theory you need go out and observe how religion is practiced. So what happens if practice deviates from what the theory says? One reaction would be to suggest that practice is in error, that it deviates from the expectation of theory simply because of misunderstanding, or, willful neglect of the inferences. For example, most people would agree that most religions teach that adultery is wrong, but many believers continue to engage in adultery because of personal weaknesses despite their acceding to the moral principle that their actions are wrong.

I accept the second point; many times people act in willful contradiction of their admitted religious principles because of personal failings. I do not accept the first; that is, that deviations from expectation are error. If I was religious I might accept this as a matter of faith because I accept particular premises about the nature of religion. Specifically, that religion maps non-trivially and transcendentally upon particular truths about the universe. If I was a theist I would also assert religion is a revelation from an entity of unimaginable power and scope. Because the premises of religion are what they are, there must be a true religion, a particular most religious religion which maps perfectly upon the Platonic idea of what a religion should be in the mind of the god who revealed the religion.

But personally I don't accept this. I don't think that the initial axioms of religion about god and revelation are anything more than mental constructs; productions of human cognition, not expression of ontological truths.. Because religion is a production of the human mind I believe there is a profound subjectivity to its expression and perception. Additionally, I do not believe there is a Platonic ideal religion which maps onto true religion. All religion is true only insofar as religion is ultimately rooted in neurological material and phenomenological process; gods exist only in the mind's eye.

And therefore, I do not totally shrug off the accusation that I am a Post-Modernist when it comes to religion. Since I believe that religion is fundamentally a mental construct, I do not believe that individually it is my place to tell a religious person what their religion is all about. It is what their mind tells them it is. It is what it is. Of course, there is a problem insofar as while I think religion is simply a production of their minds, they believe it is a reflection of some deep truth outside of their minds. We, the religious person and I, disagree on the fundamental nature of religion. They may reject Post-Modernism precisely because they believe that religion is true. I believe that it is false insofar as I am considering the set of assertions which they believe are true, but I believe that religion is true as a mental process.

This brings to the disagreement I have with some atheists, a disagreement I would have with myself when I was 18. An atheist believes that the claims of religion are false, but an atheist may believe that there is a true expression of religion which can be back-projected toward its premises. An atheist may reject the premises, but they may hold a model of religion which conceives of it as a set of necessary inferences, a chain of tight propositions back to the original premises.

I do not believe that this model reflects reality; that is, it does not reflect the truth of how religion manifests itself in the world around us. I do not believe that religion as it is practiced is tightly constrained by a primitive initial set of beliefs. Instead of an analogy to a logical or mathematical formalism as the theoretical superstructure of religion, I believe that something more akin to law is appropriate. In other words, religion is a matter of interpreting from the premises toward a range of conclusions. The sample space which religion as it is practiced inhabits is very large, and relatively loosely, if at all, constrained by the premises of religion. Rather, the sample space is contingent upon local historical context and its own endogenous evolutionary pathway.

Of course, many religious persons will tell you this is not so. But my discussion at this point is not with the religious, but those who reject its truth claims as I do. My contention is that religion is not well characterized as a set of necessary propositions, so deviation from "expectation" is not error, rather, it reflects an interpretative difference along the set of propositions which is a matter of local condition and contingency. You might ask how it is then that religious professionals might agree that "of course A → X", where there are intervening inferences. I believe this is for show and comes about through social consensus. My own study of Chinese Islam suggests that when separated from other religionists a subgroup can quickly deviate outside of the bounds of the consensus, and only reintegration into the world wide information network can correct the "errors" which creep into the inferences.

Rather, the true nature of religious logic is better illustrated through its evolution over time, which implies a malleability and loose constraint from premises. After all, the Nicene Creed and the basic corpus of the Bible have been axioms which span nearly 2,000 years, but the normative form of Christianity varied a great deal due to time-sensitive interpretation.

Some, but not all, religious people will assert that there isn't any time-sensitive interpretation; that past interpretations were wrong or conditioned by local circumstances, but present interpretations reflect the true spirit of the doctrine. Again, if you accept the presuppositions of a religion as to its transcendent truth value and revelation from god on high this is a reasonable assertion. But if you do not accept the truth value of the religious premises then one must question it, and ask if we are not again seeing local temporal conditions being the important determinants of religious practice.

Because of the world wide nature of Christianity or Islam we can see how this dynamic plays out spatially. The African churches of the Anglican communion hold to the dominant view in regards to homosexuality over time of the Christian tradition. The American and Europe branches hold different views. Both groups claim that their perspective in the authentic and true interpretation of the religion, but I think what you're seeing is simply different local conditions. After all the African branches of the Anglican communion don't adhere to all the precepts of Anglicanism as it was in 1600, or Christianity as it was in 300. In fact some "Southern" Christian theologians have argued strongly for an indigenization of Christian practice to accommodate local practices, in part by asserting that Christianity as it was practiced and evolved over the past 2,000 years was in fact Europeanized (e.g., the rejection of polygyny is attributed to Greco-Roman pagan influence, as evidenced by the acceptance of the practice among Jews outside of Europe).

At this point I would like to sidestep for a bit into my model of cognition. In short I believe that many cognitive processes are reflexive, or somehow encapsulated from our conscious inspection and awareness. Rationality is like a shimmering surface above the deep roiling waters of our mental processes. The human mind is a collective, and one where there is imperfect communication or unanimity. Mathematics works because its formal system is so precise and clear that there is no possibility of "cognitive creep" fudging the sequence of inferences to suit our own ends. In contrast, verbal logic is subject to interpretation, and so inevitably subjective or exogenous parameters end up shaping its outcome. Wealthy Christians may genuinely believe that their wealth is a gift from god, and that Christ wishes them to be wealthy. From the outside one might note that wealthier Christians seem to come to a particular interpretation in regards to material success, while less wealthy ones come to another, but both might be equally sincere in accepting that their logic was objective. The problem here is that the nature of cognition means that without the straight-jacket of symbolic formalism people easily and unconsciously insert hidden variables into the reasoning process.

More concretely, this gets us to something like the Bible. I've been talking as if the premises are clear and distinct even if the propositions entailed are not so much. In fact reading the Bible itself is subject to a great deal of interpretation. "Literal" readings of the Bible are not usually quite so literal, rather, they often "hide" the interpretation by packing it straight into the text without acknowledgment. By this, I mean that Fundamentalists may appeal to a Bible which translates a word or passage in a manner to their liking. Non-Fundamentalists may admit beforehand that there are different readings, or in the process of smoking out the inferences point to the different directions where the text could take you. Fundamentalists may assert that there is no falsity in the Bible, but they eliminate falsification and contradiction simply through expedient reinterpretations of words. Jesus Christ prophesied that he would return before the passing of a generation, but since generation means Jewish people, as long as the Jewish people remain he need not necessarily return (why does generation mean Jewish people when it says generation? Don't ask).

Nevertheless, at least there is sense in the Bible. The nature of the Bible is such that it is accessible to a typical person; the stories and ideas extant within are intelligible. What about theology and religious philosophy? To a great extent I don't believe they have sense; that is, I don't think that they mean anything in a direct fashion. I don't think even the theologians themselves understand what they're saying or what it means. That implies to me that the problems with viewing religion as a logical system start out with the axioms.

After all this, I think it's pretty clear I don't think as a phenomenon that religion is what religious people think it is. So what is it? I do believe one can make objective generalizations about religion, but I believe to a great extent it is an empirical matter, not one of inferences derived from textual and theological presuppositions. Religion is how it is practiced. Religious people may believe that religion is true, so likely how they are practicing is the closest to true religion in their own mind. But from a non-religious perspective I think it is useful to simply define and characterize it by the distribution of practices and beliefs that people hold, and not by texts or experts. Therefore, one can make generalizations about religions for a particular time and place, but since there are few constraints one can not make universal generalizations.

This gets to my point about instrumental utility. A model of religious behavior, a predictive model so to speak, can be constructed, but its priors must be the proximate behaviors and beliefs. An inductive system is within our reach, but I believe any deductive system predicated on religious priors (texts, theologies, etc.) are highly suspect. I do believe that a deductive system which suggests constraints is possible, but I do not believe that it is possible from the world of religious studies, rather, one must look to the social and biological sciences. Since religion is a cognitive phenomenon we must examine the priors which constrain and shape the unfolding of the cognitive process.

In my post Richard Dawkins - Islamophobe? I implied that Islam is Creationistic in orientation. I believe this is true, insofar as I believe most Muslims would be what we call Young Earth Creationists. But, this is an empirical matter. There are Muslims who are not Creationists in this fashion. Are they then less "true to Islam"? I don't believe so. Islam is what Muslims believe, if they believe that that is true to Islam that is their opinion and I won't gainsay that. That being said, there is a statistical generalization one can make. On a theoretical level does the nature of Muslim interpretation of the Koran constrain or bias Islam toward Creationism? Possibly. That being said, most Muslims do not read the Koran, most Muslims can not speak Arabic, especially the classical variant within the Koran, and a substantial minority of Muslims are even illiterate. I do not believe that Muslims are by necessary Creationist, rather, that is simply the modal state of Islam here and now. That may change due to interpretation.

In other words, an objective model of Muslims can be constructed based on ascertainment of the empirical distribution. This distribution though is in constant flux, and that flux is contingent up a host of parameters, very few of which are ultimately rooted in some sort of religious premise. For an atheist to make an assertion about what the true Islam is is like a geologist to define the most rocky rock. A rock is a rock.

Though abbreviated I'll end my own model of explaining religion at this point. But rather I want to shift to some of the atheists who criticize this model. I believe their own rationale for trying to truncate religion into a simply formal system is pretty obvious; you can disprove formalisms. On the other hand, the sprawling complex phenomenon that I describe above is a bigger fish to fry. Like a natural system it requires a great deal of study to re-engineer and model. It takes work, and we're not really there yet because the social sciences have not advanced to the point where we have all the tools necessary to understand the phenomenon we speak of, and which affects our lives on a very deep level. We can't just argue religious people out of religion if the model I'm proposing is correct; we can't just show that it's unreasonable and false because reasoning and falsity isn't really the point of it. My main criticism of The God Delusion is that Richard Dawkins seems to "get" that religion is more than a simple set of beliefs derivable from axioms in the first half of the book...but in the second half he pretends as if it is exactly that to "refute" it. If it was a matter of conjecture and refutation it would be rather tractable, but it isn't. The model of religion that many atheists hold in their mind is simply one thing: wrong. That's just objectively so. But the godless delusion that religion is what an atheist thinks religion is is hard to banish.

Tango Bravo

August 2008 Column for The Letter newspaper

It takes pig-headed determination and a lot of junk science to perpetrate the fantasy that Christians of any variety are a persecuted minority in the USA. The hue and cry are usually raised when “turn or burn” fringe sects are hindered in their drive to establish their brand of religion as the law of the land or their coercive proselytizing gets obstructed or challenged. Here in Kentucky we have no shortage of “proselytize and establish” groups. One loud and outspoken faction is set up as a sham museum. It seems a god of some form or another told them that The Flintstones actually happened. My favorite, an especially wacky group, is critical of selected research at state universities in the Commonwealth. Funny how none of their “expert staff” have qualifications or credentials in the fields they are quick to loathe. They also tend not to read the studies they don’t like nor do their off-the-wall critiques make an appearance in anything resembling a peer reviewed journal or a professional organization’s conference. Culture warriors just don’t have time for all that. When you are absolutely convinced nothing worth knowing exists outside your religious dogma then your motivation to know is a bit stunted. Hurtling head-long into the 19th century these groups are satisfied that the earth is flat, the sun circles us inside a crystal dome above the waters in the sky and dinosaurs walked the earth with our uppity great-grandparents.

What do determined groups of Know-Nothings and Flat Earthers do to win converts to their junk science and contorted theology? First, it’s important to pretend to be persecuted when bogus “findings” or practices come to light. Everybody pulls for the underdog. Second, it’s important to quash relentlessly any facts that undermine the “flat earth and Flintstones” mentality. Here’s where we meet Tango. Tango has two dads. And she’s a penguin.

And Tango Makes Three is a children’s book by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell. It dares to report that two male penguins in New York’s Central Park Zoo hatched an egg and raised the chick that emerged. That’s it. No “male bodied drag queens” or “leather clad sexual predators” appear. A lavishly illustrated children’s book about three penguins in the zoo is the most challenged book in the USA according to the American Library Association. This is the second year in a row that Richardson and Parnell’s book has that dubious honor. Tango has been the prey of bogus controversy in schools and public library branches from sea to shining sea. None of this is happening because Tango’s story isn’t true. It’s because Tango’s story is natural. The Flat Earthers and Know-Nothings don’t like those parts of nature that profane their junk science and upset their faux Victorian sensibilities.

There really is no good reason to let them get away with it. Christianity, in its various flavors and hues, is not being persecuted in Kentucky or any other state of the Union. Velociraptors didn’t mow down anyone that looks remotely like Barney Rubble at any time in the past. Same sex play, attachment, bonding and the rearing of cute little off-spring is natural and conspicuous in the animal kingdom. Letting the Flat Earthers and Know-Nothings prevail drags all of us back into the bad old days of established religions, coercive proselytizing and snake oil chicanery. Don’t take my word for it. Look it up.

The Jealous God continues his rampage

Let's begin with this lengthy quote:

This third branch of Christianity (fundamentalism) poses a serious threat to our political well-being. Authoritarian, narrow in its scope, rigid in its attitudes, and tautological in its thinking, evangelical fundamentalism has been making war on the founding ideas of the United States. Its belief in submission to authority puts it at odds with a democratic republic. Its hostility to intellectual inquiry—by its very nature an interrogation of authority—causes it to wage war on scientific research and modern medicine. Its valorization of ancient codes of behavior inspires its attacks on feminism and gay rights. Its revisionist attitude toward history—denying the deism, skepticism, and Masonic associations of certain major Founders—is dishonest. Hamilton

I suggest reading the entire article.  My bias against fundamentalism is fully in play.  Can I be impartial when I'm thinking about a system of thought and religion about which I feel nothing but loathing and contempt?  Probably not.  Does the way I feel actually matter?  Probably not.  I doubt that James Dobson or Martin Cothran at the Family Foundation of Kentucky lose much sleep over the fact that I don't like their religion/politics/obsessions with turning Christianity into a world devouring fungus.  Just as it doesn't really matter to me that they want to love me right into a re-education center/concentration camp where Jesus will whip the queerness out of me. 

It's also intriguing to note that the Anglicans, believe it or not, are bringing out the worst of my entrenched and irrational rage against Christian fundamentalism.  Lambeth is wrapping up.  If you have never heard of Lambeth, give it a google and came back.  The Anglican bishops have decided to continue to appease the Anglican fundamentalists and pretend that fundamentalism is simply another way of reading the Bible and being a Christian.  They are wrong.  Fundamentalism is not OK.  Fundamentalism does not need to be accomodated.  The bigot bishops that have hooked their hatred to a translation of an ancient text that gives them cover to "burn the witch," "hate the sodomite," "veil the women" are wrong.  Putting a lace doiley on their big pile of bigotry and hate will not, is not, can not be a way to move forward. 

Institutional Christianities are broken beyond repair and cannot be fixed.  The groups that call themselves "non-denominational" are not solutions.  They're another cover for fundamentalism.  Look at this post over at Post Rant Rant:  Bible-believing.  Is he right?  Is it possible to read the Bible, at all, and walk away with anything other than damage?  Has the day come when scripture, of whatever type, is just another flashpoint for those spoiling for violence and conquest?          

What’s Wrong With This (Religious) Picture?

Wren's Nest  on Witches' Voice  has a story out of Wisconsin.  It's a freedom of religion dispute.  Unfortunately the Alliance Defense Fund is involved.  They are a notorious dominionist group that I watch with some regularity.  My response to the article was to point out ADF's involvement and provide links to the piece of art the student produced.  It's here.  There is also a press release on the school board's web site here.  There is no permalink so it will probably move soon.  You might be interested in ADF's current action file.  It's quite a piece of work.  They leaved no stone unturned when it comes to asserting Christian dominionist privilege with a side order of "turn or burn" theology, jingoism and xenophobia.