According to these million moms, just hiring someone who's gay is so intolerable to "traditional families" that they supposedly won't want to shop at J. C. Penney now. That's not just offensive to gay people. It's offensive to those families, because it implies that this entire category of people is so uniformly homophobic that they can't even bear to do business with a company that employs gay people. What makes them think every "traditional family" would agree with that?

They further demand that J. C. Penney "remain neutral in the culture war." But since when does neutrality require the total exclusion of gay people from jobs just because they're gay? How could that possibly fall under any imaginable concept of what it means to be neutral? It sounds more like they've tried to redefine "neutral" as only doing what they want, and to do otherwise must be a departure from that. How else could someone believe it's neutral to discriminate against gay people for no reason whatsoever?

After their attack on Ellen backfired tremendously, they sent out an email claiming that "Ellen is attempting to indoctrinate our children." Apparently she'll be doing that via her role as a department store spokesperson, in which she'll naturally be serving as an exponent of sexual morality. Clearly, that must be what J. C. Penney hired her to do. If they did decide to replace her, do those million moms expect that someone more representative of "traditional families" would use their position to instruct people on how they should be having sex? "Attention shoppers: Please don't be gay! It makes a million moms really sad!"? How is this even tangentially related to their job? Are company spokespeople supposed to be a source of moral guidance now?

But they didn't stop there. The American Family Association's radio host Fred Jackson was unusually revealing when he said, "What makes Ellen DeGeneres dangerous is that she's a nice person". And he's right: Ellen is dangerous. Not to the rest of us, of course. No, she's dangerous to these people. She provides them with no way to use her as an example of the alleged depravity, sickness and misery of gay people. She's proven that an openly gay woman can be accepted, appreciated, and even admired by middle America and "traditional families". She absolutely overturns their reality in a way they cannot respond to without retreating to simple prejudice.

The sheer breadth of her achievement incinerates their claims that gay people are doomed to a life of isolation, desperation and ostracism. The only way they can try to rescuscitate their failed perspective is by working to force that exclusion and disapproval upon Ellen herself, as if to prove that life must really be that bad for gay people - and if it's not, they'll do their damnedest to make sure that it is. This is their last resort: trying to roll back progress by hand.

And how dare these "million moms" suggest that motherhood must mean shielding children from the fact that gay people can be successful? Fuck everything about that! Children deserve better than to be told that happiness and accomplishment are off-limits to anyone who isn't straight. I'd rather have my kids "indoctrinated" by Ellen, because they should know that the world can be theirs no matter who they love. And I bet there actually are a million moms who agree with that.

In the wake of this directive, over a hundred Catholic bishops have spoken out and claimed that this requirement is an attack on their religious liberty and a violation of their conscience. Officially, the Catholic Church's doctrine on birth control holds that separating the procreative element from heterosexual intercourse is a sin. This includes the use of condoms, birth control pills, injections, IUDs, and other artificial methods. Instead, the church approves of "natural family planning", which involves reserving sex for the phases of the menstrual cycle when a woman cannot become pregnant. So, according to the church, it's okay to choose to prevent pregnancy by intentionally having sex during a time of known infertility, but it's not okay to choose to prevent pregnancy by medically or mechanically precluding the possibility of fertilization. It's not entirely clear to me how that doesn't encompass the technique of ensuring that an egg won't be present to be fertilized when you're having sex, but I'm sure they've justified it one way or another.

In any case, whether the requirement to cover contraception is against the beliefs of Catholics is largely irrelevant. The hospitals and colleges which would have to provide this coverage employ people from every walk of life and every belief system. These Catholic-affiliated organizations do not exclusively hire Catholics. We're talking about hospitals and schools that all kinds of people go to, and all kinds of people work at. With this objection, Catholic bishops are demanding that employees of the University of Notre Dame, St. Joseph's Hospital of Phoenix, and practically any religiously affiliated business, should not have the same access to contraception that any other employees would. Why should non-Catholics and non-believers be denied that coverage simply because they work for a business that's associated with a certain church?

Further, does this requirement actually conflict with the conscience of Catholics? Their doctrine considers contraception to be sinful, and their leaders have condemned this directive, but what do everyday Catholics think? Do they, too, have a problem with birth control? No! A recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 49% of Americans overall agree that religiously affiliated colleges and hospitals should be required to provide health care plans that cover birth control at no cost. How many Catholics agreed with this? 52%, dropping to 45% among Catholics who vote. The difference in support for this requirement between Catholics and all Americans is negligible. A survey by Public Policy Polling confirmed this, finding that 57% of voters believe women employed by Catholic hospitals and universities should have the same rights to contraceptive coverage, and 53% of Catholics agree with this.

But how do Catholics themselves feel about the use of birth control? A 2011 report by the Guttmacher Institute found that out of all Catholic women who have had sex, 98% used contraception other than the church-endorsed "natural family planning" method, which only 2% of them rely on - "even among Catholic women who attend church once a month or more". 68% use IUDs, hormonal methods, or male or female sterilization. Another 15% use condoms. The statistics are largely the same for Catholic women who are married: only 3% use "natural family planning", and 72% use IUDs, sterilization or hormonal methods.

If that's the case, then why are these Catholic bishops claiming it would violate their conscience if Catholic-affiliated businesses are required to provide access to birth control methods which a strong majority of Catholic women have already chosen to use? Why are they depicting this as an attack on Catholic values, when most Catholics don't share those values at all? When Catholic views on this policy hardly differ from those of Americans altogether, there is no way this can be honestly characterized as something that has a disproportionate impact on Catholics.

So why are the media uncritically parroting and validating this plainly inaccurate narrative? Why is Reuters running a story titled "Obama risks Catholic vote with birth-control mandate", when surveys indicate he isn't risking the Catholic vote any more than the average American vote? Why is USA Today letting Archbishop Timothy Dolan use their opinion page to allege that this policy is "un-American" - a claim which, in light of recent polls, doesn't even make sense? Why does the archbishop of Atlanta get coverage for saying that "The Church is going to fight this regulation with all the available resources we have", when a majority of church members don't consider this worth fighting against, and many of them are actually using the very birth control methods at issue here?

If this is supposed to be about respecting the conscience of Catholics, then why has everyone been focusing on the bloviations of a handful of bishops, while ignoring the millions of Catholics who disagree with them? How does that possibly respect their values?

Six days made the earth? Just a metaphor, fool
We're allowed to buy slaves? That's no longer a rule
And Adam and Eve, with a literate snake?
It's only a parable, make no mistake
Does it preach death for gays? No, they're just damned to hell
You can let witches live, but they're hellbound as well
And all of those laws that regard menstruation?
An old, obsolete, bureaucratic creation!

Excuses abound, with their long-practiced skill
They can write off most anything - you know they will
But then comes the twist in this splitting of hairs:
Their comrades have much different answers from theirs!
They've rationalized it a whole different way
You won't get a straight answer, I'm sorry to say
For the doctrines of everyone other than they
Are the very beliefs against which they inveigh.

From Catholic to Baptist, Messianic Jew,
Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran too,
LDS, Christian Science, they all get their due
As each one insists that the rest are untrue
So who's figured out the correct world view?
Which one do we follow? Which ones to eschew?
Who among them is right? Have they even a clue?
There's so much to sort through. So let's start our review...

Can women be clergy, or only the men?
What happens when Jesus comes back here again?
Was he even a god? Or a man, nothing more?
Was he stuck to the cross with three nails or four?
Could this holy wafer be part of his head?
A leg or a thigh, or just plain old white bread?
Did humans evolve? Were they made in a week?
Is Hell full of screaming, or nary a squeak?

Is the pontiff the antichrist? Some say it's true
Is salvation by faith, or are works needed too?
Are gays really sinners? Just maybe, they're not
Should saints be ignored, or petitioned a lot?
Must priests remain celibate? What's the result?
Should infants be baptized, or only adults?
Is the Bible correct to the very last letter?
Did Joseph Smith Jr. write something much better?

And let's not forget the apocalypse lore,
With horsemen and dragons and angels galore
Do we all have our own resurrection in store?
Or just one-hundred-forty-four thousand, no more?
Do we even know when it might happen, if ever?
Like 2012, on the fifteenth of never?
You might be surprised, because some people say
That the world ends once there are too many gays.

And that's just a slice of the faith smorgasbord,
The diversity's simply too vast to record
But if you cite the Bible, you won't be ignored
You'll be set upon by a devout, raging horde
From every direction, in mob and in throng,
They'll rush to accuse you of reading it wrong
Though they shouldn't be shocked when this doesn't hold sway
For they all would be wrong, if they all had their way.

You can see how it makes for a frustrating time
When this mishmash of faith has no reason or rhyme
It's enough to make atheists throw up their hands
And tell Christians to go figure out where they stand
But amidst all the turmoil, confusion and stress
Something very revealing comes out of this mess
For these plain contradictions, dissensions and shouts
Give us great ammunition for our kind of doubts.

In particular, one frequent question you'll see
Can be answered quite swiftly - if you've got the key
"So God's not your thing," pounds the old Christian drum,
"But where do you get your morality from?"

Yes, it's common enough to make anyone ill
Do they really believe that we'll swallow this pill?
As if no one could possibly know wrong from right
Without putting their faith in a myth that's so trite
Nope, I'd have no idea just what I should do
If I hadn't read tales from around the year 2
I'd be paralyzed, frozen, bewildered and lost
Without moral advice from some guy on a cross.

To claim this sincerely is silly enough
Yet it raises a question that's really quite tough
You're telling me that's how your ethics were seeded,
But how did you know it was this that you needed?
Just why did you think that the Bible was true,
And not the Qur'an, or the Mormon books too?
And once you'd picked out your religion of choice,
How'd you find the best church with the right faithful voice?

What made you decide contraception was bad,
And the Catholics are right when they get very mad?
Why did you believe that God loves all the gays,
And the liberal churches have found the true way?
What made you dismiss all that snake-handling crap?
Does your church say religion's a self-righteous trap?
On origins, sexism, Hell, and the pope,
What made up your mind? Tell me, how did you cope?

It's clear that you couldn't be morally impotent
You picked your own favorite brand of omnipotent!
That was your ethical judgment in action
And we have that, too - it's not owned by your faction
We use our own judgment to filter beliefs,
We just don't make religion our ethical chief
While you claim your morals are guided by scripture,
I think we all know this is not the whole picture.

No matter your faith, and no matter how strong,
You use your own sense of what's right and what's wrong
Meta-ethically speaking, your god's not a plus,
So please don't pretend that you're better than us.

This line of reasoning is easily understandable by everyone, and it's also completely wrong. As a measure of an organization's efficiency in funding certain initiatives, this tells us almost nothing. The implication is that the proportion of their expenses which doesn't go directly to providing services is unacceptably high. But this conclusion can't be justified simply by citing a number like 20% or 25%. Expecting that an organization should put all of its funding toward actual services, or even as much of its funding as is technically possible, demonstrates a stunning nearsightedness about financial planning. Such organizations must acquire their funding somehow. They have to manage how that funding is used, ensure a continued supply of funds, and defend against any possible threats to their organization. They need to make decisions about what they do. They need to hire people to make those decisions. And they need to find people who will make good decisions.

Six-digit salaries for top executives may sound outrageous, but they might also serve to attract extremely competent people. Under their leadership, the organization may find that this was a very worthwhile investment. Similarly, paying for expensive fundraisers and marketing campaigns might turn out to be worth it, earning them more money than they spent on this. If these funds had simply been used to provide services instead, the organization could find it has much less funding available for that purpose, due to unqualified management and dismal fundraising efforts. If acquiring more funding for their causes requires spending more money on marketing and directors, why shouldn't they aim to maximize their available funding? It's easy to get angry about a charity's CEO making a million dollars a year. It's not so easy to say that cancer research and health services for the poor should lose their funding because your sensibilities were offended.

Of course, this doesn't mean that the expenses of salaries and fundraising should have no upper limit at all. There's obviously a point where any further returns would be insubstantial and not worth the cost, and anything beyond that actually would be an unnecessary expense. Every charitable organization is responsible for striking a balance that's appropriate to its goals. But even if they do manage to work out the best proportion of administrative overhead to maximize their funding, this still doesn't show that they're directing it toward a worthwhile goal. This isn't always as easy to quantify, but it's not hard to understand that efficiency is meaningless when you're efficiently doing something wrong. "Wrong" is a concept that can be challenging to pin down, so let's just consider a couple of especially striking examples.

The Toys for Tots Foundation claims to spend 98% of the donations it receives on providing gifts for less fortunate children. VillageReach provides vaccines in Mozambique, and is estimated to prevent one death for every $400-800 spent. If we have $800 to spend as we please, we can either give $800 worth of toys to a number of children, or we can give $800 worth of not being dead to someone in Africa. The choice is yours, but you do have a decision to make.

Going back to Mozambique, Remnant Publications reports: "They are hungry for the Word of God but cannot afford Bibles! The majority are fortunate to have even one meal a day. They need our help!" Indeed they do. In this situation, the numbers aren't quite so important. For a starving person, no amount of Bibles can add up to the equivalent of food. Bibles are inedible, and for them to have any plausible purpose, their readers must first not be dead. It's somewhat like trying to stop a flood by providing iPods instead of sandbags. Remnant Publications claims that every donation of $3 will ship one Bible to Mozambique. Knowing that $800 will prevent someone's death, would you rather spend it on 260 Bibles or saving one life?

People make choices like these on a regular basis. They withhold their money from initiatives to provide food and vaccines - initiatives they may not have even been aware of - and instead spend it on Bibles or toys or the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Considering that this is how many people choose to allocate their donations on the scale of tens to hundreds of dollars, what the hell makes them think they're qualified to manage the finances of a $400 million-a-year foundation?

To be clear - because some people tend to conflate these things - this does not mean that Komen's current resource allocation is the best it could be, or even that it's good. It does not mean that it isn't possible for charity directors to be overpaid, or for marketing efforts to be excessive. It is not a defense of Komen's litigation against other charities. It is not a defense of their senior VP Karen Handel, who believes that gay adoption should be outlawed and gay parents are less legitimate than straight parents. And it does not mean Komen was correct in rescinding their grants to Planned Parenthood. Those arguments can stand or fall on their own merits. But simply criticizing a charitable organization for having operating costs and paying its employees does absolutely nothing to show any kind of wrongdoing on their part. Overhead ratios don't just give you an incomplete picture of an organization's efficiency - they don't tell you anything useful at all.

It is, of course, unavoidable that religious organizations have many problems that are specific to their nature as institutions. If they have a leadership hierarchy, it's possible for that leadership to become corrupted in various ways. For instance, a religious institution could potentially have a problem with rampant child abuse, and be directed by its leaders to avoid reporting this to law enforcement. Organized religions can also establish their own doctrines and dogma which their clergy and members are required to abide by. Depending on the content of their beliefs, this can be used for good or bad purposes, but it is nevertheless a blunt instrument. Simply being among a great number of people who appear to share your beliefs can discourage critical examination and doubt.

A religious body can be capable of exerting social pressure on individuals in a very focused way. A person's social network, possibly including their own family, may be based largely in a certain religious community. This organization then has the power to influence that person and discourage any dissent by instructing their fellow adherents to shun and exclude them until they do what's demanded of them. This can also be accomplished less explicitly by promoting the idea that a certain religious group is the only way to salvation, and the rest are terribly mistaken. This doesn't leave much room for disagreement.

Religious organizations are especially well-positioned to mobilize their followers for political purposes, as demonstrated by the efforts of the Catholic Church to encourage parishioners to fight against gay marriage in California, Maine, Minnesota and Washington. While this could potentially be directed to more positive goals, it still presents one group's religious beliefs as a basis for public policies that affect everyone.

All things considered, it isn't looking very good for organized religion. But religion, whether it's organized or not, comes with a variety of problems that its organizational aspects are not solely responsible for. For example, polls show that people who attend church more frequently are less likely to support gay marriage, and vice versa. This pattern has also emerged in polls of Catholics specifically, whose official religious doctrine opposes gay marriage. But what is the nature of the relationship between church attendance and personal religious fervor? Do people become more religious as a result of attending church? Or do they attend church because of the strength of their belief? Could both of these attributes be linked to an unidentified third factor? None of this is ruled out by the data, and neither is any of it singled out.

While it makes sense that exposure to organized religion in its various forms would have an influence on one's religious views - especially among youth who didn't get to choose whether to participate - it makes just as much sense that religiously inclined people would tend to gravitate toward religious bodies. Although it can be appealing to imagine that religious organizations originated as a conspiracy of social control - an impression that the actions of many religions have done nothing to dispel - it seems more likely that religious groups developed organically. Religious people, like anyone else with a certain interest, will try to seek out like-minded individuals. They find others who share their views, and they embark on a common enterprise.

It might be nice to think that ending religious organizations would suffice to end religion entirely, but many people have religious impulses that would persist in the absence of their favored religious group. Even if it were possible to "disorganize" organized religion and scatter it to the ends of the earth, religious people would once again discover that there are others like them, and they would regroup.

Without religious institutions to channel and coordinate believers, many of them would still be disposed to certain patterns of thought and behavior which can be hazardous. You don't need to attend religious services to think that spirits are conversing with you and giving you their personal attention. You don't need the affirmation of a religion to believe that deities are handing you the only correct answers and anyone else who says the same must be wrong. You don't need hymns and homilies to attribute natural occurrences to divine intervention. You don't need a pope or an imam to think it's okay for you to believe something for no reason beyond simply wanting it to be true or feeling that it's true. You don't need official dogma to act like your ideas about God are a sufficient basis for depriving your fellow citizens of their equal rights - or killing them for insulting someone you call a prophet.

All this requires is an incomplete understanding of secularism, liberty, ethics, reason, and the natural world. Organized religion may facilitate such manifestations of ignorance, but make no mistake: they can and do flourish without it. People are born this ignorant. Religious belief provides a focal point for that, and organized religion offers an especially elaborate template for people to subscribe to wholesale. But this ignorance is the default state of the untrained human mind, and it's a breeding ground for superstition.

Organized religions are often subjected to criticism simply because they're such a convenient target. They're so visible, powerful and active that it's very easy to point out when they do something wrong - especially when they do a lot of things wrong all the time. When individuals are singled out, it's typically because they're a representative of a given religious group, whereas it would seem unnecessary and petty to point out that John Q. Unaffiliated God-Believer is being epistemically irresponsible. But he is, and on a large enough scale, this snowballs into a significant issue. There's a tendency to miss the trees for the forest and treat religion as a separate entity from the individuals it's composed of. In truth, the problem of organized religion wouldn't and couldn't exist if it weren't for religious people.

For years up in Congress, this served him quite well
Back then, bashing gays was a guaranteed sell
To whip up your base in a grand frothy mix,
Despising the queers was the greatest of tricks
"They're a threat to us all!" Nothing more need be said,
Before riding to victory on dark waves of dread.

So you'd think, indispensable as this trick was,
It consistently keeps all the voters abuzz
Yet this was not to be, to our shock and surprise
For it seems the electorate opened their eyes
No more can Santorum turn hate into clout
The wedge has been blunted - the froth has run out!

And now our friend Rick finds himself quite harassed,
For he's dogged by his history, stuck in the past
As he strains to catch up, he may soon be outclassed
In a world where, for once, bigots might come in last.

He's jumped into this year's Republican mire
To be our dear leader, Santorum aspires
But the hateful cliches he once called solid ground
Will not be enough to make him the one crowned.

At campaign stops all over, poor Rick has been chased
By his own phobic stain that just won't be erased
In South Carolina, it came down the wire,
A supporter had asked him a question most dire
This mother was cheering for Rick all the way -
But what would she say to her son who is gay?

Standing right at his side, his wife Karen piped in
To tell us how "vilified" Rick has now been
By dastardly activists gay as a blade,
Who are "bullying" him for his righteous crusade
He "doesn't hate anyone," Karen opined,
Then Rick himself gave us a piece of his mind:

It's mere "policy difference," and it's not his fault
If we think that's "personal" or an "assault"
He "loves everyone", Rick Santorum insists,
It's just that gay marriages shouldn't exist
"Accept everybody," that's what he's "called to"
So this hullabaloo is undue and untrue.

Such hate and revulsion, he's clearly above,
But let's see how Santorum has shown us his love...

Back in 2003, in an AP report,
His remarks were of such a remarkable sort
Addressing gay marriage, that bane of his life,
He insists matrimony must be man and wife
"It's not man on child," the senator said,
It's not "man on dog" - no, not even purebred.

Presumably also it's not man on frog,
It's not man on building, it's not man on bog,
It's not man on tree, man on tripe, man on tram,
And it's certainly not man on green eggs and ham
So whatever the case, mill or mare or Manx cat,
It can only be woman and man, and that's that.

And further, he said with his mouth tinged in foam,
There's no right to consensual sex in your home
Against sodomy laws, there can be no sound case
If you're gay, don't have sex! And remember your place,
Right next to the barnyard and NAMBLA's home base.

So I guess that's the "policy difference" of Rick
He says that's not personal? I say: You dick!
Perhaps you forgot that we're people with lives,
We're partners, we're families, we're husbands, we're wives
We even have children to raise in this land,
And so we will not stand to live under your hand!

But I'm sure we're alright - no, we're not in poor shape
If our whole country thinks we're as bad as child rape
And I'm certain you really do like us, of course,
When you say that our love is like sex with a horse
If people should ever believe what you say,
What effect could that possibly have on my day?

And what would you think if I said, with a smile,
"I love you, you rapist! I love you, zoophile!"
Would that seem sincere and resoundingly true?
It doesn't sound much better coming from you.

So let's all take pity on poor bullied Rick,
Who thinks we're no better than screwing a tick
Poor vilified homophobe, Christian and straight,
And legally married in all fifty states
He loves everyone! So call off the attack,
I'm sure you're all making him feel quite blah.

He loves his Bible, church, and Lord, he still believes in sin
But nope, that's not religion, for the difference lies within
He doesn't think he's perfect - oh yes, what a humble soul
He's not a fan of rules, just believing is his role
So don't be sanctimonious, admit that you're a sinner,
Believe that Jesus died for you, and God says you're a winner!

I've never heard of that before, dear Jefferson Bethke
But it sure sounds familiar - oh! It's Christianity!
Now who on earth would fall for this cute definition trick?
If you don't think about it, then it does seem rather slick.

Religion's often seen as being hate-filled and judgmental
To have that name hitched to your faith would be so detrimental
So let's just find another word - let's call the whole thing "Jesus"
And maybe it might actually change how the world sees us.

Yes, I see what you did there, Jeff, but nobody's impressed
When one religious movement claims that only they are blessed
It's nothing new when churches paint all others as a blight,
As sheer demonic heresy - for they alone are right
From doctrine, dogma, sin and Hell, you give us no relief
It's just a crafty strategy to market your belief.

So who is Mr. Bethke, and from what was he inspired?
He says it's just a home-made film. Is that how this transpired?
We know that he's a member of a church that's called Mars Hill
Where thousands gather every week to hear the holy spiel.

Mark Driscoll is their pastor, a self-styled rebel cleric
Whose stances, theologically, are really quite generic
This macho, hardcore preacher never hesitates to tell:
If you haven't heard of Jesus, then prepare to burn in Hell!
To him there's no salvation in benevolent behavior
Being nice won't help you - you need Jesus as your savior.

And no doubt Pastor Driscoll thinks himself rather volcanic,
When he tells his parishioners that yoga is Satanic
On women in the clergy, we're assured that he's no advocate
If they can't bring in manly men, that means they're inadequate.

Instructing people on how they should live their married life,
He tells a tale of how he wished to leave his pregnant wife
What would prompt a Godly man to make this declaration?
He found out that in high school, she had sexual relations
And when he goes on Facebook to mock "effeminate" preachers,
There's little to distinguish him from other Christian teachers.

While Bethke aims to make his faith seem so much more dimensional,
We all know that it's nothing but religion most conventional
And I don't think you need so many platitudes to say,
"Religion's old and stuffy - now let's go to church and pray!"

Word.

Yet for all of its succinct elegance, this particular point usually seems to fail at actually changing anyone's mind. Why? I suspect it's because this just isn't a very good argument after all. As is often the case, my mistake became obvious to me once I saw someone else committing the same error. In an open letter to the family who disowned them, a certain blogger asked why they would accept a savior who spent his time in the company of tax collectors, prostitutes, outcasts and sinners, while rejecting their own child for being transgender, homeless, a sex worker, and addicted to drugs.

While their family's decision to abandon them is appalling, this question immediately shifted my perspective on this sort of argument, and made the situation quite a bit clearer. As a desperate plea for humanity to people who lack all semblance of it, it's certainly understandable in its motivations, but nevertheless unlikely to be effective. Here's why: Both right-wing Christians and more liberal individuals who make this argument are referring to Jesus by name, but the characters they envision are so dissimilar, they can scarcely be said to be talking about the same person.

While people who ask these Christians why they're not acting more like Jesus may see him as preaching a message of universal love, radical inclusion, social justice, economic equality and non-aggression, the Christians they're addressing are more likely to view Jesus as judgmental, intolerant, narrowly dogmatic, homophobic, obsessed with chastity, and only merciful and loving in a way that can somehow be expressed by eternal torture. If we hadn't been explicitly told that the individuals described here are actually supposed to be the same person, we probably wouldn't come to that conclusion on our own. In this area of dispute, people are using the name "Jesus" to express two distinctly different notions. That's why challenging intolerant Christians with the idea of an all-loving Jesus doesn't get you very far - they simply don't subscribe to that concept. It fails to reveal any kind of hypocrisy on their part, because they aren't actually being hypocritical.

Subsequently, this often tends to become an argument about what kind of person the historical Jesus really was, and whose characterization of Jesus is more accurate. Taking the discussion in this direction would be a serious mistake, because it only serves to validate the assumption that this should matter. If we did try to tackle this on a theological level, simple claims like "Jesus loved everyone" and "Jesus hung out with sinners" would likely be met with a plethora of detailed rebuttals. Misguided as they may be, Christian apologists have had plenty of time to practice and refine their tactics. But no matter who's correct about what Jesus really meant to say - assuming this can even be decisively resolved - it still doesn't mean that his message possesses any exceptional force to determine what's right and wrong.

On a secular level, the teachings of Jesus have no unique bearing on ethics beyond those of others, and in many respects, they stand out as especially bizarre and disturbing. Regardless of your own moral stance, attempting to show that Jesus was more in line with your values means trying to take ownership of someone who, according to the Bible, said you should sell your clothes so you can buy a sword. This is someone who said that anyone who doesn't follow him will burn in Hell. This is someone who called a woman a "dog" because she was of a different race. This is someone who said that his religion would turn families against each other and tear them apart. This is someone who said you have to hate your parents, your children, your partner, and even your own life in order to follow him - and even under a less literal interpretation of the word "hate", this still suggests that we should value this man above anything else in our lives.

Here, C. S. Lewis may have actually had a point: Unless Jesus was of a divine nature such that his proclamations can define morality, he wasn't exactly a "great moral teacher" as a human being.

So how did people who would likely disavow these hateful and intolerant doctrines find themselves in the position of fighting to have Jesus on their side? Yet again, while the argument may be faulty, the motives are understandable. Given that the character of Jesus is so deeply admired in our culture, people have every reason to try and harness that respect to support their own preferred values. As long as Jesus is considered the purest embodiment of virtue, there's bound to be conflict over whose virtues he embodies.

Is this really something we want to encourage? Arguing that Jesus would endorse our ethics over those of others only reinforces the assumption that his alleged moral outlook is important to us and worth fighting about. It shouldn't be, and trying to gather support for your own values by redefining the idea of Jesus that people have chosen to believe in is a kind of intellectual dishonesty and rhetorical deception that should be beneath all of us. We can do better than this.

So: what would Jesus do? Who cares?

One of the first objections to arise was the suggestion that you shouldn't talk about sex workers at all if you aren't a sex worker yourself or if you haven't spoken to sex workers. First of all, people often discuss topics that they may not be personally involved in, and while firsthand experience can provide unique and valuable insight, it does not necessarily make you any more correct on a given point. Furthermore, to assume that someone's position on sex work must mean that they've never spoken with any sex workers implies that doing so will reliably alter someone's views and induce them to adopt a particular stance on the subject. It suggests that it would be outright impossible for them to maintain their present position after, or even because of, speaking to sex workers. For anyone to insinuate that the experiences of sex workers will invariably support their own stance seems very overreaching.

Others pointed out that sex worker rights advocates are often also involving in fighting for causes such as immigration reform and transgender rights. This is indeed a praiseworthy endeavor, but the validity of these causes does not make the remainder of their positions correct by contagion. Conversely, many noted that prostitution is also seen as harmful by fundamentalist Christians and certain severely transphobic feminists, as if to say that anyone who shares this view is just as bad as these groups. But the wisdom or idiocy of someone who holds a certain stance does not change the validity, truth value, or factual support of the position itself. The Catholic Church may oppose the death penalty as a matter of official policy, but this obviously doesn't mean that this view is inherently linked to them or forever contaminated by its association with them.

Further, some drew attention to the fact that various so-called "rescue" groups seeking to help sex workers leave prostitution are often run by evangelical Christians who frequently engage in religious indoctrination, and are otherwise insensitive to the actual needs of sex workers. This is clearly a problem, as is the invasion of religion into a multitude of charity and assistance roles in society. But just as with feeding the hungry, it does not mean that the very idea of helping sex workers who want to leave the trade is irredeemably flawed - only that its execution has often been compromised by ignorance and blind dogma, and this needs to change.

It's also been mentioned that studies by anti-prostitution researchers such as Melissa Farley and Janice Raymond often contain methodological flaws which severely undermine their validity. But regardless of the nature of these errors, the flaws in studies purportedly showing that prostitution is dangerous do not mean that it must therefore be safe, just as flaws in a study showing it to be safe would not mean it was harmful. Instead, it indicates that the study in question simply does not tell us anything useful about the facts of prostitution.

Many people also seemed to suggest that claiming prostitution is harmful must mean passing some kind of moral judgment upon sex workers themselves for their activities. Finding this unacceptable, they concluded that it must therefore be wrong to say that prostitution is harmful. But regarding prostitution as harmful does not necessitate condemning sex workers. After all, many people have cited the dangerous working conditions for sex workers as a reason why criminalization is an inadequate and harmful policy. Passing judgment on workers would require some kind of ethical theory beyond the factual question of whether prostitution is dangerous, and I personally do not see the condemnation of sex workers as warranted or appropriate in any way.

On a related note, some people seemed imply that to criticize testimonial ads such as those from Turn Off The Blue Light in Ireland is tantamount to supporting social stigma against sex workers. Apparently, since these ads aim to diminish the stigma against sex workers, then taking issue with these ads must mean endorsing that stigma. But this doesn't follow, and holding to such logic only serves as a way of using one's well-intentioned motives to preclude any criticism of the actual results.

While it may not have been their goal, these posters neglect to mention the very real dangers faced by many sex workers as part of their job. In doing so, they give the impression that it's not much different from any other profession - that it's a safe, uneventful, and thoroughly ordinary way to make a living, chosen freely and on its own merits rather than due to a lack of alternatives. But for many sex workers, it is not a job that suits their needs, in terms of workplace safety, a living wage, freedom from exploitation, and, yes, not wanting to have to sleep with paying customers just to survive. Instead, these posters depict sex work as a satisfying, voluntary and harmless job like any other. That may be the case for some sex workers, but certainly not for many others. And unless misleadingly portraying such circumstances as typical of sex work is actually the only way to reduce stigma, no one is opposing such efforts by simply objecting to this approach.

Many people did say that prostitution shouldn't be seen as different from any other job, in that many people are forced to hold unpleasant jobs because there are no better alternatives and they need money. But prostitution is different: it frequently comes with an inordinate risk of assault, robbery, sexual harassment, rape, and murder, unlike that of practically any other job. Workplace safety is often lacking, if not absent entirely. For this, workers receive no hazard pay whatsoever. Given the conditions under which many of them work, it's plainly inaccurate to say that there's no more coercion in choosing prostitution than there is in any other undesirable job. Such circumstances do not tend to attract willing employees.

Sex workers themselves have attested to this. In a commonly cited study by the Pivot Legal Society in Vancouver, many workers said that prostitution should not be a job that anyone could be required to take as part of a search for work in order to receive income assistance:

"Well I should say sex work, being in the sex trade is not an option; it's just like a survival thing. I mean... it's usually... not by choice.... If someone were forcing you to go back, ...that's like a pimp, that's kind of saying, oh you have to go risk your life."

"I don't think they should be forced into the trade [by an income assistance worker] because of things that could happen in the industry as being a sex worker – harmful to the mind like bad dates and drug use..."

"Because not everybody has the emotional control to be a sex worker, or detachment. Detachment to be a sex worker."

"I believe that it is a very hard job to do, you are basically a sexual surrogate... and I agree that it takes a certain... personality type to do that kind of job. It's a very, very specialized occupation."

"There's a difference between selling your ass and selling a hamburger. The hamburger's not personal."

If listening to sex workers is key, then it would seem that even sex workers consider prostitution to be different in kind from other types of employment.

People have often claimed that the hazards of prostitution arise from the criminalization of selling or buying sexual services, operating brothels, procuring and soliciting, and that many of these risks would be ameliorated if all of this were decriminalized and treated like any other fully legal profession. And there is quite a lot to be said for this position. When prostitution is against the law, this discourages workers from reporting any crimes against them for fear of prosecution, leaving them extremely vulnerable to abuse. It also leaves their jobs completely outside the realm of any kind of workplace safety regulations, and their employers aren't required to operate within the applicable labor laws, creating an environment where exploitation flourishes.

In theory, decriminalization would remedy most if not all of these issues, and prostitution finally would become a job chosen because it suits people's needs, with no more coercion than any other. But has this actually happened? New Zealand is often upheld as a model for full decriminalization, yet in a five-year review (PDF) of the 2003 Prostitution Reform Act, many workers reported having experienced assault, violent threats, being held against their will, theft, refusal to pay, and even rape. Few of them reported this to the police, and most who were surveyed felt that the Reform Act "could do little about the violence that occurred." "...less than a quarter - felt there had been an improvement." While there seem to be very few studies comparing the general well-being and safety of sex workers before and after this kind of reform, decriminalization does not appear to have been enough to prevent workers in New Zealand from continuing to experience violent abuse and mistreatment, especially those working at street level.

If prostitution should be treated like any other job, then it's worth considering that we wouldn't accept such unsafe conditions in any other job. Most people don't have a problem with recognizing that some working conditions are simply too dangerous to be allowed, and such businesses are regulated or prohibited accordingly. Yet many advocates for decriminalization claim that too much legal regulation would only drive the sex trade underground once more and leave workers unprotected again. Clearly, determining the proper stringency of regulation is a challenging and delicate task, and the actual impact of a policy on workers should be the bottom line. But to suggest that anything which could conceivably impede the transaction must be done away with for fear of fueling the black market is simply negligent. Having the law look the other way on this does not make sex workers any more safe.

If decriminalization does actually improve the safety and welfare of sex workers, then this is a great start. If it doesn't, and their working conditions remain just as dangerous, then other options are worth considering. Many advocates for decriminalization approach this issue with a goal of harm reduction, and so do I. And if these unacceptable dangers are simply inherent to prostitution (or a certain variety of it) and cannot be minimized while leaving the profession itself intact, then reducing the harm of prostitution requires reducing prostitution itself.

We can agree that certain legal regimes have been shown to be unsuccessful at accomplishing this, and even harmful to sex workers without addressing their needs, but it does not mean that this can't be a valid goal. It shouldn't be outside the bounds of acceptable discourse to believe that nobody should be exposed to such hazards in the course of employment. This does not have to imply an unbending adherence to any particular policy, whether it's full criminalization, criminalization of clients, full decriminalization, or legal regulation. Many people contend that all efforts at reducing prostitution have failed, but just as with any other problem we're faced with, past failures are no reason to stop developing new strategies.

Finally, some people pointed out that because prostitution is often the only option for sex workers, then working to eliminate prostitution would be taking their only option away from them. That may be the case, but there are a plethora of circumstances where people are deprived of income because something is too dangerous or inhumane to be legally allowed, such as child labor and sweatshops. Even if someone claimed that they had a wonderful experience working at an unsafe coal mine, and wanted no legal interference in this arrangement, such conditions would still not be permitted. The answer is not to remove the laws which prohibit these kinds of employment, but to remedy the lack of options which is forcing people into unsafe jobs such as prostitution. Sex workers have often attested to the inadequate social support they receive, which leaves them with nowhere else to turn. If nobody ever had to enter sex work, then it seems likely that fewer people would.

The question of which legal framework is most effective for dealing with prostitution is far from resolved, but full decriminalization appears to fall short of being the panacea that many have presented it as. The presumptuousness of people who expect and then demand complete support for this policy position is vastly out of proportion to the actual evidence of its efficacy. Contrary to prevailing opinion, it has not been established as a proven fact that would be as foolish to question as evolution. There is room for disagreement here, and recognizing that prostitution remains a dangerous field does not constitute a blemish upon one's rationality.

Sex positive feminism is a relatively new movement in feminism which originated in the 1990s. It arose as a reactionary movement in direct opposition both to millennia-long patriarchal and usually religious movements against specifically women having sex, and opposition to second-wave feminists' anti-pornography viewpoints. It is the idea that a woman's sexual liberation is central to women's liberation as a whole; that a woman's freedom must include the freedom to have sex whenever, however, and with whomever she likes. Parallel goals include recognizing different kinds of beauty, and celebrating various sexualized expressions of beauty, masculine, feminine, and everywhere in between, including pornography and sex work.

Opponents of sex positive feminism, sometimes derisively referred to as "sex-negative feminists," argue that pornography objectifies women, sex work keeps women second-class and in a great deal of danger, and that the sex positive movement is not actually feminist but a disguised extension of male privilege - a movement which overwhelmingly makes colorful excuses for the objectification of women and favors men's dicks. Sex positive feminists are sometimes derisively referred to as "fun-feminists."

For the sake of simplicity, I'll refer to those on the feminist side of the opposition to the sex positive movement as anti-pornography. The division of feminism into sex-positive and anti-pornography feminism began in the 1990s and persists through today, and like any radical movement in its adolescence, sex positive feminism has brought enthusiastic and idealistic attention to some important issues - and has some glaring blemishes on its face.

Sex positive feminism has been a positive force in the acceptance of queer sexuality. The movement places heavy focus on the acceptance and inclusion of different sexual orientations and gender identities, which was long, long overdue. It is also inarguably important that women be able to enjoy the freedom of having sex with whomever they want and whenever they want to do it. For too long over too many thousands of years, women's sexuality has been institutionally controlled. Only recently has western culture stopped actually killing or shunning women for having extramarital sex, and there are still exceptions. Some eastern cultures still mutilate women's genitals to keep their sexual expression in check. There is definitely a place for sex positive discussion in the gender equality movement.

At the core of the rift between sex positive and anti-pornography feminism is their interpretations of what constitutes empowerment and oppression in the larger arena of female sexuality, from high heels and lipstick to submissives in sub/dom relationships to sex workers. Simply put, while anti-pornography feminists tend to view socialized aspects of female sexuality as coercion until proven innocent, sex-positive feminists see most of it as consent until proven guilty.

The anti-pornography crowd, for example, will often argue that high heels, miniskirts, and makeup are uncomfortable, expensive, and in some cases near-crippling, and that to call them empowering expressions of femininity is disingenuous and insulting. Sex positive feminists might argue that high heels are hot and if women choose to wear them, then they ought not be shamed either by agents of the patriarchy wishing to devalue them due to their visible desire for sex, or by their sisters in feminism who would take something as benign as an article of clothing and claim that it was oppressing women. After all, heels make their calves look good.

The same goes with things such as pornography and sex work, where anti-pornography feminists claim that a monetary contract for sex is oppressive and dangerous to women (and men, but disproportionately women), sex positive feminists claim that women can consent to these things as much as they can consent to sex without pay, or as much as they can consent to any other sort of work that pays them, and the only difference between getting paid to be a secretary and getting paid to be a sex worker is that sex outside of marriage is considered by the patriarchy to be improper and debasing for women.

While sex positive feminists certainly have a point by saying that women should be considered able to consent to sex in all contexts and can even consent to wearing things traditionally labeled sexy, and while they definitely have an argument that women should not be shamed or devalued because they look sexy or have sex for work, there are significant problems with these arguments.

Full gender equality does not yet exist, and many of us are hesitant to join in enthusiastically on current ideals of sexiness in the contexts of interpersonal relationships, feminine presentation, and especially commerce. While sex positive feminists claim to be challenging those ideals, they are only doing so inasmuch as they intend to add to them with things not previously considered sexy (for example, fat acceptance). While there is certainly a place for that, there is also a pervasive and purposeful push for acceptance of the current ideals if that's your preference. The idea that any sexual preference whatsoever is legitimate and natural, and is probably only considered bad because patriarchy, is to deny how overwhelmingly the current ideals benefit heterosexual men at the expense of the rest of us. How awkward and out of place would it be to hear a heterosexual man say that he was not in fact oppressed or anything, but simply wanted to burn his hair with styling tools, then put on those crippling shoes, revealing short shorts, and daily face paint because he thinks it's sexy and therefore women think it's sexy, and he likes women and sex? No one would mistake such an individual for empowered. If it seems absurd to expect from men, then it ought to seem absurd to expect from women.

Further to the point, this focus on expanding the ideals of beauty and sexiness so that everyone can have a slice to further empowerment for women is doing exactly the opposite of what feminists have been working toward for decades, and not for nothing. It keeps us locked in this asinine prison of a value system that teaches women they must be aesthetically pleasing to be sexually desirable and sexually desirable to be whole. Again, how awkward would it seem to base a movement on reassuring men that they're all handsome? Or, to use a stereotype more often associated with men's desirability, to assure them that no matter how little money they have, they're rich so long as they're confident?

However, the biggest and most shameful crime of the sex positive movement is the cherrypicking of testimonials from sex workers of all sorts – from nude models to actors in pornography to exotic dancers to escorts - as though middle-class, healthy, educated agents of gender equality made up a significant portion of the industry's representatives. The stories of hundreds of thousands of women who worked in the sex industry and experienced emotionally painful objectification, dehumanizing treatment, addictions, and abuse should not be dismissed as problems that can be erased by simply erasing pimps, and cannot be replaced with the assertion that sex workers are adults and therefore have agency and consent freely or that porn is healthy. Safe working environments and emotionally healthy consent simply are not components of most sex workers' realities. Sex workers are overwhelmingly female and overwhelmingly unsafe. Scrawling the word "empowerment" over the sex industry is by far the sex positive movement's largest insult toward women.

But, it's still a baby. Maybe it will grow up someday.