Granted, nothing that comes out of the mouth of anyone remotely involved in politics this close to an election cycle can be trusted. I’m aware that this contrived controversy is an opportunity for conservatives and an awkward discomfort for the liberals. I understand that even though it is contrived it still could have ramifications beyond all expectation on all of humanity…or in ten years we’ll have nearly forgotten about it.

But at the moment it’s an important issue for the political conservatives and liberals.

Are we gonna be tough, draw the line, tell them terrorists that they may be able to get away with living in our country for now but by god they’ll sit where we tell them and build their goddam temple-celebrating-the-defeat-of-Christians somewhere else like Minnesota (OK, maybe not) or California. Hell, they’re all fruits and nuts out there anyway. Oh, never mind. How about half-way between California and Hawaii?

Well, we could if it weren’t for all them damn liberals talking about freedom of religion, separation of church and state, private property rights, religious tolerance, the Constitution, freedom. They’re all a bunch of weaklings, they’re pussies, they’re unpatriotic, don’t support the troops, think we descended from monkeys and ought to be able to marry the family dog. They’re commies, socialists, elitists, atheists, gays. They have no morals and love to kill babies and old people. They worry too much about their precious rights without understanding that rights and freedom only aid the enemy. It’s like having your RPG ripped out of your arms and having it turned on you. A real conservative (you know, like a real Christian…they have tests, I hear) understands that when the enemy grabs your gun your best move is to render that gun inactive. If freedom and rights are so vulnerable that they provide aid and comfort to the enemy then they have to go. We can’t afford them. They’re a chink in our suit of armor, a hole in the flag with which we drape ourselves. Freedom and rights are weaknesses, tolerance and diversity responsible for them damned terrorists being allowed to build a recruitment center right-smack-dab on top of where so many fine Christian people died at the hands of people just like them, pretty much. Well, sure, there were a few others that died that day, like other Muslims, Jews, gays, atheists, but dammit, they just got what they deserved. Still, they were American enough for us to exploit, I mean use as examples.

Jesus, so much better than all them others

Sure freedom includes vulnerabilities. The only way we can even come close to providing a high level of security from terrorism is to restrict freedom. Less freedom may translate into greater safety, but remember they suffer terrorism in countries that provide almost no freedom to its citizens. So why should we believe that programs like the Patriot Act will be effective? What evidence is there that surrendering freedom will guarantee security? In theory it should, but the real world shows that it doesn’t.

Freedom, like peace, is an attitude and practice that the right portrays as weakness and unpatriotic and the left pays homage to but seldom becomes passionate about anymore. Freedom, like peace, make us vulnerable.

Conservatives want the U.S. to appear to the world as a bully, the big kid who may not be too bright but by gawd is big and nasty and able to kick anyone’s ass that gets in his way. Liberals embarrass conservatives because by espousing tolerance, peace, diplomacy, plurality, they expose America’s weaknesses to the enemy (just about every other nation on the planet). It’s like we’ve let the rest of the world know that the bully wears girl’s panties and likes to dress up in his sister’s clothes on the weekend.

But it’s far too late to pretend to the rest of the world that we have no weaknesses. Our true enemies, foreign and domestic, already know our weaknesses, they already know how to “game” our system. We used to know how to turn our weaknesses into strengths and virtues, learn from our mistakes. Now it seems we’ve chosen to simply deny our weaknesses, our vulnerabilities, and try like hell to make those pesky liberals so ashamed of themselves they’ll shut or better yet, move away. With them fully marginalized America will be free to insist that it is a Christian nation based on the Protestant interpretation of the Bible and that god approves of everything we do. America will show the world by example that mixing politics and religion is the right thing to do as long as politics=conservative right and religion=Christianity. We can then do what we want because god is on our side. The more extreme the U.S. becomes the rest of the world will follow suite or risk becoming collateral damage in the upcoming religious war between the Christians and the Muslims, with special guest appearances by the Jews (or will they be revealed to secretly be behind the whole thing?), the Pope, Mormons, teabaggers, libertarians and Buddhists.

You know, we’ve been down this same road before. Maybe this enmity between the Christians and the Muslims has never gone away. It’s been there for hundreds of years, simmering just under the surface and looking for the first opportunity to explode. And that time has come, again. Maybe we should expect this every 400 years or so, or maybe they’ll ramp it up this time beyond all control and they will succeed in bringing about the rapid extinction of the human race. It’s hard to guess which way things are headed.

Round 1

Liberals hope to prevent that sort of future. Social liberals. The political liberals are slowly morphing into left-leaning conservatives. Political and social liberals may share a common set of principles, but their goals are not always the same. Social liberals look at the Democratic party in much the same way as conservatives do the Republican. Elections are now battlegrounds between conservatives and liberals, not always Republican versus Democrat. Viewpoints have supplanted party affiliation. The level of enmity between liberals and conservatives is far greater than that between Republicans and Democrats. Liberals don’t see this as a good thing because it’s hard to leverage anger and resentment mixed with a dash of racism and sexism into something that liberals can deal with. They don’t seem to be able to use that frustration that so many Americans feel on so many different levels to their advantage. The Democrats have become the party of “Yeah, OK, us too, I guess” and the Republicans the party of “Follow us. We don’t know where we’re headed either but we strut more confidently so we must have been designed to be the leaders.” Conservatives and liberals will decide the next few elections. And social conservatives and liberals will argue entitlements and compassion.

Meanwhile, out back of the bar, a fistfight breaks out between Joe and Moe. Soon knives are drawn, then small arms, finally the mobile tactical nuclear munitions. Joe’s last words before oblivion were, “Woo-whee, we sure showed them ragheads we don’t want their terrorist factory parked on top of the graves of Christian martyrs.” Well, actually, Joe died right after the “Woo-whee”, but those of us who knew him can assure you those would have been his last words if he hadn’t have been in such a big a hurry to meet his master.

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I would love to be able to report that this clown, fool, douchebag, Christian minister was an example of Poe’s Law, but sadly, he appears to be genuine.

Image via Wikipedia

BBC Urdu reports — according to a Google Translation — that Pakistan’s Deputy Attorney General has launched a criminal investigation against Zuckerberg and others in response to Facebook hosting a “Draw Muhammad” contest on its site late last month. On May 19, Pakistani authorities blocked access to Facebook over the contest, and this ban was lifted on May 31 after Facebook removed the page in Pakistan and other countries.

Last month, according to English-language Pakistani newspaper The News International, a Pakistani High Court judge summoned the police after lawyer Muhammad Azhar Siddique filed an application for a First Information Report (FIR), claiming that the owners of Facebook had committed a heinous and serious crime under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code. In essence, an FIR launches a criminal investigation. But no charges have been filed.

According to the paper, Section 295-C of the penal code reads: “Use of derogatory remark etc, in respect of the Holy Prophet, whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable for fine.”

According to two reports — one at Boxcrack.net, a kind of citizen journalism site run by Privacy International, and another at Pro Pakistani, a Pakistani Telecom and IT news site that lifted the news from BBC Urdu — the Deputy Attorney General has indeed lodged an FIR against Zuckerberg, fellow co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, and “Andy”, the German woman who initiated the Draw Muhammad contest under a pseudonym.

According to Pro Paskistani, petitioner Muhammad Azhar Sidiqque said he’s waiting for the police to contact Interpol about making arrangements for the arrest of Facebook’s owners and “Andy”. The site also says that the Deputy Attorney General told the High Court that Pakistan’s United Nations representative has asked to escalate the issue in the UN General Assembly. (theregister.com)

Do these Pakistani fools have nothing better to do? Couldn’t their time be better spent trying to drag themselves out of the 3rd century into the 21st the rest of the world is experiencing?

Yes, the Draw Muhammad contest was blasphemous; it was meant to be. It was intended to expose the superstitious nonsense that passes for religion. This response simply reinforces the fact that Islam as practiced by far too many Muslims is anything but a religion of peace. It’s more like a petulant 4-year-old who doesn’t get his way and throws tantrums at every opportunity.

Get a clue, folks. The non-Muslim world doesn’t give a flying fuck about your prophet or your beliefs, just like the non-Christian world doesn’t give a flying fuck about their silly beliefs. If your beliefs work for you, great, be as illogical and unrealistic as you want. But don’t fool yourselves into thinking those outside your club care to live by your rules. The more you try to force your unwanted beliefs on us, the harder we’ll fight back and stand up to your attempted enslavement of our freedom to think as we wish.

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That’s a complaint atheists encounter on a regular basis; atheists demean believers and misrepresent their beliefs in an effort to belittle them.

Do theists ever listen to themselves or read what they write?

Fox News on-line has a reasonably “fair and balanced” article on the different viewpoints on religion held by Christpher Hitchens and his brother Peter. Perhaps conveniently Christopher couldn’t be reached for comment, but even though the article is focused primarily on Peter’s comments it still manages not to completely vilify Christopher.

Like many on-line news outlets, even blogs, the comments reveal more than the article does.

Right off the bat the accusations fly,

theists are free to not believe in God if they don’t want to. Wnat bothers me is (1) Arrogance of some atheists and their disdain for those who believe, and (2) Some atheists’ suppression of fair debate and expression of thought

Obviously the religious never engage in disdain for those who don’t agree with them and are never arrogant. Right. Let’s read further,

“To those who call themselves “atheists”: There is no God? Really? And you know this HOW? You have been EVERYWHERE and know EVERYTHING in all dimensions and in all galaxies, and there is no God?”

There are several documented cases of people experiencing discrimination simply by offering an opinion other than Big Bang and Evolution. There is no one stupid except for the one unwilling to learn.

“Evolution is a proven fact.” You’ve just proven how little you know about your cherished theory.

One simple question to those “atheist” out there. Where did life come from? Hmm? And don’t say macro evolution. Evolution is a disproven THEORY. A rational “atheist” would be more accurate in calling themselves an agnostic.

God is the Spirit of Truth says the Holy Bible. Fear of God is the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs) but a fool says in his heart, there is no God (Psalm 14). Science is the study of nature, which reveals the handiwork of God. God is not a respector of nations or individuals. A nation that does not respect God shall not prosper.

Believing that there isn’t a God is also a belief. It must be an unfounded belief because it can’t be proven any more than one can prove there is a God. And many prefer to believe that love and intelligence and creativity flows through us and comes from an eternal God.

Being atheistic is largely an ego thing..A longing to be different..A cry for attention..”Look at me..I’m an atheist..” So, big deal….. Being an old US Army veteran I can attest to the fact there are no atheists in foxholes…

I’m not going to make the ridiculous claim, as some theists might about their fellow believers, that non-believers are always polite and respectful of the opinions of others. Obviously there are some very angry atheists out there who are tired of being condemned to hell and called fools for their lack of faith. Perhaps they have had enough of the unreasonable presumption that only those who believe in gods are true patriots or qualified to hold public office. Maybe they’ve had enough of hearing the religious say that non-believers desire only to live in sin and not be accountable to one god or another. There might even be more than a few really angry non-believers living under theocratic governments who are resentful of knowing at any moment they could be arrested and executed without a fair trial simply for not agreeing with the ruling majority.

I’m sure many people living under constant persecution and threats of death come across less than genial when speaking out against their oppressors. I don’t doubt that there are those who, while not living under such intolerable conditions, empathize so much with those who do that their own opinions are less than polite. That the religious are blind to those conditions is not surprising, nor is it excusable.

Most of the atheists I know don’t consider believers to be stupid in the totality of their thinking; it’s only on the topic of gods that many intelligent people abandon their otherwise healthy skepticism and doubt and embrace the fantastic without question. It’s not that stupid people are religious, it’s that religion makes you stupid about belief.

And if that sort of comment offends you, tough shit. Get the mote out of your own eye before you attempt to bitch about my vision. (BTW-I, too, am an Army veteran, and let me tell you, there are indeed atheists in foxholes. I was one.)

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Find the equivalent of Aaron Hamill, The Man Show boy who would go up to strangers and ask them the most bizarre questions or make outrageous requests.

This Sunday, have him go up to various priests and ministers and say, “My mom died last year. I want to give her the best gift ever. Would you please pray and raise my mom from the dead? Please?”

Record their excuses and lack-of-faith responses and forward them to me. I’ll post them and we can vote on the most nonsensical and evasive.

“And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.” John 14:13-14

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” Matthew 7:7-11

Too many times a day I read or hear someone say that in order to preserve America we need to return to the values and lifestyles we had in the 50s. Sadly, some of these people, like me, are old enough to remember the 50s and still suggest those were the “good old days”.

Bullshit.

I lived through six years of that decade, and spent the 60s as a youngster raised on the values spawned in the 50s. So did my fellow baby-boomers, the same people who crafted the government that has succeeded in nearly bankrupting our nation and eroding our freedoms. Yet they have the gall to present these same values as something to be desired.

Let’s recall those 50s values and beliefs that so many on the religious right want us to return to.

• Blacks were second-class citizens. Segregation was accepted as a solution to equality under the law. Blacks couldn’t even piss in the same toilet as a white man.
• Women were expected to be stay-at-home moms with no aspirations beyond having and caring for babies and “their man”.
• Gays rarely if ever announced their orientation for fear of harassment and physical harm. Black jazz clubs and gay baths had a lot in common. Both were retreats from the predominant white, straight society.
• Fossil fuels were inexhaustible and meant for us to exploit. Only commies would worry about oil shortages or responsible stewardship of natural resources.
• The ideal family lived in a suburb surrounded by equally white families with two children, a gas-guzzling car, all supported by a sole-bread-winning father.
• Christianity was the norm. Catholics were Satanic and no one admitted to not believing in any god at all.
• Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex, but no one listened.
• McCarthy labeled everyone who didn’t agree with the government a communist, and most people agreed with him.

There were a few good things about the 50s; children could wander almost anywhere in town and be safe, more people lived in rural areas and enjoyed a more stress-free way of life. But the best of the 50s were restricted to white, Christian, heterosexual males.

The 50s were only glorious in fiction, on television shows and in novels. The reality of the 50s has little in common with the stylized nostalgic version of the 50s so fondly remembered by those with selective memories. The reason white males want to return to the 50s is because modern society has disenfranchised them. They’ve lost their power to all the other Americans with whom they (reluctantly) share the nation. They want to go back in time to a period when they were the ideal. They don’t like having to share power and influence. They’re no better than a spoiled child who has been told to share his toys with the other kids.

Evidently to be conservative entails living in the past. I see no gain in that. Besides, it’s physically impossible to go back in time except in our imaginations and memory. We are bound by nature to move ever forward. The arrow of time only moves in one direction. We can enter the future with determination and hope, or we can enter the future fussing and refusing to accept reality. Either way, there’s no going back. And who would really want to when we recall what the 50s were really like for so many of us.

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Heathen Queer » Glen Beck is better than you

Thank you. I agree. Beck’s got me beat in;

• douchebaggery
• cluelessness
• hysteria
• misinformation
• lying
• misrepresenting history
• inflammatory rhetoric

Try as I might, I simply cannot compete with the master.

But I haven’t lost any advertisers.

Oh, and Glen, to quote John Fuelsang, “Obama is not a brown-skinned anti-war socialist who gives away free healthcare. You’re thinking of Jesus.“

Image via Wikipedia

At fucking up.

Democrats, liberals and the sane have dismissed Beck’s hyperbole for years, but despite our best efforts, Beck loyalists have excused his racism, his bigotry, his emotional problem, his obvious character flaws and with an impressive lack of reason blame the left for all of Glen’s issues.

But now he’s managed to piss off a fairly mainstream branch of Christianity and they are calling for their followers and sympathizers to boycott Beck, Fox and maybe even Beck’s god.

An evangelical leader is calling for a boycott of Glenn Beck’s television show and challenging the Fox News personality to a public debate after Beck vilified churches that preach economic and social justice.The Rev. Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, a network of progressive Christians, says Beck perverted Jesus’ message when he urged Christians last week to leave churches that preach social and economic justice.

Wallis says Beck compared those churches to Communists and Nazis.

Wallis says at least 20,000 people have already responded to his call to boycott Beck. He says Beck is confusing his personal philosophy with the Bible.

“He wants us to leave our churches, but we should leave him,” Wallis says of Beck. “When your political philosophy is to consistently favor the rich over the poor, you don’t want to hear about economic justice.”

Social and economic justice is at the heart of Jesus’ message, Wallis says.

“He’s afraid of being challenged on his silly caricatures,” Wallis says. “Glenn Beck talks a lot when he doesn’t have someone to dialogue with. Is he willing to talk with someone who he doesn’t agree with?”

Beck did not answer numerous requests for an interview. (Source-CNN)

Don’t rush the poor man. It takes more than a few days to come up with an explanation for such a major fuck-up that sounds contrite yet more importantly paints the sad man as a victim of left-wing fascist communists. He’s got to consult with speech writers, opinion pollsters, studio heads, the ratings, god and all the other sources of Glen’s opinions. Maybe next time he should talk to them first.

But this is a two-fer. Beck didn’t just loose a bunch of advertisers and now a portion of his religious base, he’s attracted the attention of god’s own best buddy, Jerry Falwell.

But a prominent evangelical leader says he, too, is suspicious of churches that preach economic and social justice.

Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, a Christian college in Virginia, says Jesus wasn’t interested in politics. He says that those pastors who preach economic and social justice “are trying to twist the gospel to say the gospel supported socialism.”

“Jesus taught that we should give to the poor and support widows, but he never said that we should elect a government that would take money from our neighbor’s hand and give it to the poor,” Falwell says.

That’s right, Jerry. God wants you to be rich; to live in luxury while preaching poverty of spirit, to cash the checks from the poor and trusting, to build temples to yourselves. You are as delusional as Beck. You make a great team. Sort of like the religious-right’s version of Martin and Lewis.

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A conservative US state senator who has voted against gay rights measures during his 14 years in office has confessed he is gay.

Republican Roy Ashburn came out during a radio interview in California, where he sits on the state legislature.

Roy Ashburn (Associated Press)

He has been on leave since his arrest last week on suspicion of driving under the influence.

Mr Ashburn said his votes reflected the way his constituents wanted him to vote, not his own “internal conflict”.

“I am gay… those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long,” the 55-year-old divorced father-of-four told KERN radio.

Mr Ashburn said he felt the need to address rumours that he had visited a gay nightclub before his arrest on suspicion of drinking and driving in Sacramento on 3 March.

Last year, Mr Ashburn opposed a bill to establish a day of recognition to honour murdered gay rights activist Harvey Milk.

He has also voted in the statehouse against efforts to expand anti-discrimination laws and recognise out-of-state gay marriages.

Cue the exuberant queer cheers, “Another anti-gay gay politician gone”, “One less enemy in government”.

Mr Ashburn, who represents California’s 18th district, said he does not plan to run for any public office after his term ends later this year.

Outed and ousted, another victory for truth and justice.

But hold on a minute. Isn’t this counter-productive to the goal of having gay representation in the government? By applauding Ashburn’s decision to leave government service, we are essentially agreeing with the anti-gay crowd that anyone who is open and honest about their homosexuality like Ashburn is now shouldn’t be a politician. It’s reasonable to chastise him for his prior dishonesty and the harm he’s done the gay community. But now that he’s being honest about himself, shouldn’t we be the first to encourage him to stay in politics and to vote for him when he runs again?

We deserve representation; the same percentage of LGBT citizens of the population should be represented by an equal percentage in the Congress and most California legislatures.

1.51% of the total U.S. population identifies themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual, or 4.3 total million Americans. These numbers are based on figures provided by a broad-based coalition of gay rights organizations and homosexual advocacy groups. The primary source cited was the The National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS), published in the book The Social Organization of Sex: Sexual Practices in the United States (1994), by Laumann, Gagnon, Michael and Michaels. (Source-U.S. Census 2000)

Most likely there’s one LGBT person in hiding for every one that was identified as such, so let’s double the percentage to 3%. Not exactly a threatening number. 3 people out of a hundred.

One advantage to electing and supporting gay politicians is that they also represent other minorities. A senator could be a woman who used to be a Black man, a congressman could be a gay Hispanic. The LGBT community embraces men and women of all races and national origin. There are gay millionaires and homeless lesbians. There are members of the clergy, those of all faiths and those with no religious faith at all who are also members of the LGBT community.  Yes, as hard as it is to believe, there are even gay republicans.

Whether they are dragged kicking and screaming out of the closet or openly disclose their orientation, we owe it to ourselves to judge the fitness to serve of these individuals by more than with whom they prefer to have sex.

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Image via Wikipedia

As an experiment, inspired by a comment on my Radical Atheist blog today, I have disabled the DISQUS commenting system here and am going back to comments within the framework of HeathenQueer.

This is a change I’ve wanted to try for some time. I’m not totally comfortable with having comments hosted by another service, away from the blog itself.

I don’t have any issues with the DISQUS service itself. It does what it claims and it does present a pleasant interface. I’ll be doing this same thing with IntenseDebate over at RadicalAtheist.com Both are worthy of consideration by blogs encumbered with hundreds of replies to deal with. They offer statistics and controls that many built-in commenting systems don’t.

I don’t suffer that burden. To me, sending the comments off-site is an impersonal way for me to treat those who do bother to leave a comment. I enjoy reading the comments left here. I know I need to reply more often, to encourage the conversation. For me the comments are personal. When I write I’m expressing honest opinions and beliefs (or lack of same). When people respond to my writing, they are responding to me, to my thoughts, to what makes me me to a large extent.

So let’s see how well this works. I’m eager to hear your opinions.

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