Why Evangelical Christians Reject Climate Change

Throughout our lives we face many choices some of which are easy and others of which are difficult - for Fox News viewers, sexual orientation isn't one of them.  Often making decisions or failing to make them comes down to intellectual laziness and/or an unwillingness to face facts and knowledge that cut against childhood indoctrination.  Most of us grow up and come to think for ourselves.  One block of Americans do not: evangelical Christians.  When confronted with inconvenient facts - e.g., the human genome project says that Adam and Eve never existed as historical persons - the reaction of this group is to reject them and to double down in the embrace of ignorance and to cling more desperately to myths and fairy tales.  Anything and anyone that challenges their serious thought free "world view" is deemed an enemy and lashed out at. Gays represent by one group that challenges their childish beliefs and bigotries.  Which brings us to climate change where 72% of evangelicals refuse to believe in it.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the deliberate embrace of a book authored by uneducated, Bronze Age goat herders over scientific acknowledge.  As the piece notes, climate change is but one of the numerous idiocies that the "godly folk" embrace.  Here are highlights:

The United States will withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change, President Trump announced Thursday. Environmental scientists say the consequences could be catastrophic for the planet. But for some Trump supporters, there’s no reason to worry.

“As a Christian, I believe that there is a creator in God who is much bigger than us,” Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) told constituents last week at a town hall in Coldwater, Mich. “And I’m confident that, if there’s a real problem, he can take care of it.”
 Among conservative evangelicals, that is not an unusual opinion. . . . only 28 percent of evangelicals believe human activity is causing climate change. Confidence that God will intervene to prevent people from destroying the world is one of the strongest barriers to gaining conservative evangelical support for environmental pacts like the Paris agreement. Climate change isn’t the first issue where such faith has presented itself. During the Cold War, premillennialist evangelicals, who believe that the Second Coming of Christ is imminent, argued that God wouldn’t allow humanity to destroy itself in a nuclear war. Conservative evangelicals during the Cold War often saw disarmament as a greater threat to the United States than the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Jerry Falwell adopted the slogan “Peace through Strength” in the early 1980s and declared that a nuclear freeze would be “national suicide.” Premillennialists such as televangelist James Robison preached that the Antichrist, who was destined to unite the world under his leadership, would use fear of nuclear weapons and a promise of peace to deceive the world into accepting world government. When scientists began sounding the alarm over climate change in the 1980s, conservative evangelicals, who had been somewhat accepting of environmentalism in the 1970s, became convinced that the Antichrist would use the fear of climate change to seize power. The 1970s environmental movement had enjoyed widespread support as it focused on smaller issues like pollution and litter. In the 1980s, though, scientists revealed problems like the depletion of the ozone layer and global warming, which required worldwide cooperation and significant economic changes to redress.  For Christians like Walberg, globalism is the most dire threat to the United States, not rising oceans and more powerful hurricanes. Just as conservative evangelicals opposed arms treaties during the Cold War, they see environmental pacts, like the Paris agreement, as paving the way for a charismatic world leader to form a global government and begin the seven-year Tribulation that precedes the Second Coming of Christ.  Trump’s anti-globalism was part of what made him attractive to conservative evangelicals in last year’s Republican primaries and the general election — and still now as president. Even if Trump’s personal life is an affront to Christian values, his message means that the United States will be standing against the potential forces of the Antichrist.  Trump doesn’t seem to have any firm beliefs, religious or otherwise. He didn’t pull us out of the Paris accord because he truly shares the conservative evangelical beliefs of many of his supporters and advisers. Still, by calling climate change a Chinese hoax, he’s shown a willingness to use similar arguments for his own purposes. We must accept that a number of conservative evangelicals, especially from older generations, will never support significant action on climate change, especially if it means signing a global treaty. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement has proven that he lacks the flexibility and foresight of Reagan, who dared negotiate with the country he declared an “evil empire.” But we can appeal to moderate and liberal evangelicals with different or milder end-times beliefs, and nonevangelical conservatives can still be convinced to cooperate if persuaded that inaction threatens U.S. standing in the world. We have no choice but to give up on Trump now, but maybe we can hope the party of Reagan will find the moral courage to combat climate change.   

In my view, the author is too optimistic about the Republican Party.  Evangelical Christians are akin to a cancer within the party that has metastasized and rendered the party in a terminal condition.  As for the fears of an Anti-Christ , I would argue that their vote him in the White House.  The only way to deal with evangelicals is to reject them socially and politically.  Their "faith" - i.e., embrace of ignorance - deserves zero respect nor do they.  They constitute a clear and present danger to America. 

Conservative America's Cult of Ignorance

Isaac Asimov made the following statement: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”  We are currently seeing an epidemic of the embrace of ignorance where facts simply do not matter or, if they cut against the agenda of the current occupant of the White House, they are labeled as "lies" and news stories that point out the dishonesty of Der Trumpenführer and many of his fellow Republicans, then they are "fake news."  Such ignorance resonates most strongly with so-called conservative.  In the political realm, this means Republicans intent on prostituting themselves to the Christofascist element in the GOP base. 

So what is the drive force behind this phenomenon?  I would argue, the Christofascists themselves who reject anything that questions their childish, myth based religious beliefs.  Science and education are enemies of Christofascist belief.  By tying themselves to the Christofascists, Republicans now increasingly reject knowledge, science and true experts.  The result? The views and opinions of the ignorant are given the same stature as those of experts and the educated and society as a whole is the loser.  We have seen this before in history and then, as now, Christianity (at least in America) is the culprit.  The learning and knowledge of ancient Rome that did not support the Christian myth in its infancy was subsequently rooted out and books were destroyed.  Those who failed to conform to Church dogma were heretics to be literally killed.  The end result?  The Dark Ages.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the cult of ignorance that now dominates much of the political and social right wing.  Here are excerpts: 

In 2014, the Washington Post polled Americans about whether the United States should engage in military intervention in the wake of the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The United States and Russia are former Cold War adversaries, each armed with hundreds of long-range nuclear weapons. A military conflict in the center of Europe, right on the Russian border, carries a risk of igniting World War III, with potentially catastrophic consequences. And yet only one in six Americans—and fewer than one in four college graduates—could identify Ukraine on a map. Ukraine is the largest country entirely in Europe, but the median respondent was still off by about 1,800 miles.

Map tests are easy to fail. Far more unsettling is that this lack of knowledge did not stop respondents from expressing fairly pointed views about the matter. Actually, this is an understatement: the public not only expressed strong views, but respondents actually showed enthusiasm for military intervention in Ukraine in direct proportion to their lack of knowledge about Ukraine. Put another way, people who thought Ukraine was located in Latin America or Australia were the most enthusiastic about the use of U.S. military force.

These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything. In the United States and other developed nations, otherwise intelligent people denigrate intellectual achievement and reject the advice of experts. Not only do increasing numbers of lay people lack basic knowledge, they reject fundamental rules of evidence and refuse to learn how to make a logical argument. In doing so, they risk throwing away centuries of accumulated knowledge and undermining the practices and habits that allow us to develop new knowledge.
 Attacks on established knowledge and the subsequent rash of poor information in the general public are sometimes amusing. Sometimes they’re even hilarious. . . . . When life and death are involved, however, it’s a lot less funny. The antics of clownish anti-vaccine crusaders like actors Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy undeniably make for great television or for a fun afternoon of reading on Twitter. But when they and other uninformed celebrities and public figures seize on myths and misinformation about the dangers of vaccines, millions of people could once again be in serious danger from preventable afflictions like measles and whooping cough.

The growth of this kind of stubborn ignorance in the midst of the Information Age cannot be explained away as merely the result of rank ignorance. Many of the people who campaign against established knowledge are otherwise adept and successful in their daily lives. In some ways, it is all worse than ignorance: it is unfounded arrogance, the outrage of an increasingly narcissistic culture that cannot endure even the slightest hint of inequality of any kind.

Any assertion of expertise from an actual expert, meanwhile, produces an explosion of anger from certain quarters of the American public, who immediately complain that such claims are nothing more than fallacious “appeals to authority,” sure signs of dreadful “elitism,” and an obvious effort to use credentials to stifle the dialogue required by a “real” democracy. Americans now believe that having equal rights in a political system also means that each person’s opinion about anything must be accepted as equal to anyone else’s. This is the credo of a fair number of people despite being obvious nonsense. It is a flat assertion of actual equality that is always illogical, sometimes funny, and often dangerous. This book, then, is about expertise.

[T]he result has not been a greater respect for knowledge, but the growth of an irrational conviction among Americans that everyone is as smart as everyone else. This is the opposite of education, which should aim to make people, no matter how smart or accomplished they are, learners for the rest of their lives. Rather, we now live in a society where the acquisition of even a little learning is the endpoint, rather than the beginning, of education. And this is a dangerous thing. 

Religious Views on Gender Laws Are at Odds With Science

A few weeks ago Katie Couric did an excellent documentary on the National Geographic Channel called "Gender Revolution" that looked at the science on transgender individuals.   The show should be mandatory viewing for every Republican member of Congress, every Republican in state legislatures, and every right wing hate spewing "Christian" pastor (Christian is in quotation marks since these pastors are the antithesis of Christian behavior).  Among other things, the show looked at medical science's knowledge of in vitro development of fetuses and how hormones influence not only outward physical gender, but also how one perceives their gender internally.  It is this hormonal influence and interplay that causes some to be born outwardly one gender when internally they deem themsevlse the opposite gender of their bodies.  Something similar happens to gays and lesbians that causes what the "godly folk" deem to be sinful attraction to those of the same sex. Science and medicine tell us that there is nothing "wrong" about these attractions and internal feelings of gender.  They are natural phenomenon and no "choice" is involved in such individuals love or view themselves.  Only religion - specifically Abrahamic religions that trace their origins to myths propounded by uneducated Bronze Age herders - says that same sex attraction and/or gender identity are wrong.  Sadly, rather than admit these truths and the reality of the source of their beliefs, the  "godly folk" who are in my view desperate to maintain their make believe fantasy world, reject science and medical knowledge and cling to ignorance.  In the process, they condemn gays, lesbians, and the transgender.  A column in Time bu a judge and former Justice Department official looks at the fallacy of applying religious belief to the issue of gender.  Here are highlights:

A person’s biological sex seems simple but is deceptively complex. It appears to be binary: An XX chromosomal pair is female, and an XY chromosomal pair is male. Doctors look at a newborn’s genitalia, pronounce the baby a boy or a girl, and the birth certificate reflects that sex assignment.

Deep-seated religious beliefs, cultural constructs, the regulation of sports (such as the rules confronted by Texas high-school wrestler Mack Beggs) and recent laws are premised on the bedrock belief that each of us is either a man or a woman. Yet the reality is that today in the United States alone there are approximately one million people who — from the moment of birth — cannot clearly be defined as either male or female.

This physiological truth is unrelated to whether someone is straight, gay or transgender. Many individuals are born with sex chromosome, endocrine or hormonal irregularities, and their birth certificates are inaccurate because in the United States birth records are not designed to allow doctors to designate an ambiguous sex. Countless people likely have no idea that they fall into this group. The more we learn about our DNA, the more that biological sex — from the moment of conception — looks like an intricate continuum and less like two tidy boxes. This understanding makes it virtually impossible for judges to consistently apply a law that permits or prohibits conduct based on whether someone is a man or a woman.

On February 22, the Trump Administration reversed the Obama policy [on transgender students]. Since President Trump was elected, Alabama, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming lawmakers have introduced legislation that would determine access to public restrooms and changing rooms based on one’s assigned sex at birth.

The most prominent case that has been in the crosshairs of this debate is G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board (“Grimm”), which challenges a Virginia school board’s policy that requires students to use bathrooms according to biological sex.

Many people share the ubiquitous notion that biological sex falls into two, mutually exclusive categories. In 2009 my perspective changed when I read an article written by a woman who learned shortly after marriage that she and her husband couldn’t have biological children because she had an XY chromosomal pairing. While she looked like a woman, and she and her parents had always believed she was female, from a genetic standpoint she was a man. The article was published the year after California passed Prop 8, a version of DOMA.

I was curious whether her situation was an obscure medical anomaly that was statistically and legally irrelevant. It wasn’t. A regularly cited 1991 study of nearly 35,000 newborn children found that 1 in 426 did not have strictly XX or XY chromosomes. In addition, the World Health Organization reports that 1 in every 2,000 births worldwide are visibly intersex, because the child’s genitals are either incomplete or ambiguous, which equates to five newborn Americans a day. This represents a sizable U.S. population that cannot be ignored by the law.

If such individuals have the right to equal protection, to privacy and to use a public restroom, what clear and science-based legal principle can our judiciary employ to determine whether they lawfully used the correct bathroom? Reliance on a birth certificate might appear to be a legitimate method to establish sex. But birth certificates are surprisingly fluid documents. They are amended regularly to add or remove parents due to adoption or because DNA results reveal paternity that is inconsistent with the original record. They are also amended to address biology.

In 2016, I received a request from parents seeking to change the name and sex of their baby’s birth certificate. The parents were initially informed they gave birth to a daughter. Genital irregularities and months of additional tests revealed that from a chromosomal and hormonal standpoint their child was, while not strictly genetically male, more “properly" categorized as a son. I granted their request to modify the birth certificate to designate the child as male. The new birth certificate replaced the original, yet neither was precisely accurate from a biological perspective.

The United States’ stringent adherence to a two-sex paradigm is inconsistent with science and incongruous with the historic and modern understanding of sex throughout many regions of the world. Dating back to 2000 B.C., three or more sexes can be found in classical Greek, Sanskrit and Hindu texts. Currently, numerous countries recognize a third or indeterminate sex including Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Japan, Nepal and New Zealand. If the bill introduced into the California state legislature in January 2017 passes, California will be the first state in the U.S. to recognize a third, non-binary gender, for birth certificates and driver’s licenses.

Neither DOMA nor HB2 reference gay or transgender individuals, but there is little doubt that both laws were designed with those populations in mind. When the Obama Administration announced its opposition to HB2, several states swiftly voiced disapproval. Then Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (now the Administrator of the EPA) sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education stating, “Your determination thus elevates the status of transgender students over those who would define their sex based on biology and who would seek to have their definition honored in the most private of places.” The Trump Administration guidance letter reversing the Obama Administration’s policy referenced the ruling of a federal district court in Texas that “held that the term ‘sex’ unambiguously refers to biological sex.”

Ironically, Trump's and Pruitt’s arguments are perhaps the most compelling ones against HB2 and similar sex- and gender-based legislation. Our biological variability means that a two-bathroom, based on two-sex approach is inadequate — and that’s before judges ever get to the issue of gender identity.

In the United States, judges are obligated to see the world through a secular lens. They must apply the law without the influence of any religious construct or political agenda. If modern science recognizes that sex has countless natural permutations, and if birth certificates, physical observation and even chromosomal testing cannot reliably categorize every individual as either male or female, then our judiciary cannot be required to make gender findings antithetical to that reality.

When legislators blur the lines of church and state and enact laws that permit or prohibit conduct based on biologic gender as only male or female — whether it is for the purpose of authorizing marriage or designating the use of public bathrooms — they place an impossible burden on our judiciary, and ultimately on our country and all of its people.

Why Are Religious People (Generally) Less Intelligent?

A piece in the Intellectualist looks at a topic that I have touched on previously over the years: the general negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity.  One prior post for instance looked at education levels of different denominations and showed highest education levels among Episcopalians and Evangelical Lutherans - the liberal denominations always attacked by fundamentalist Christofascists - and descending downward toward Pentecostals and other fundamentalist sects.  With the election of Donald Trump supposedly being a triumph for low education whites (at least according to the spin of some in the pundit class and Trump sycophants) and 81% of evangelical Christians having voted for Trump, it is worth considering whether what we just witnessed instead was a triumph of ignorance and the low IQ portion of society setting the nation on a course for disaster.  I don't deny that I hold religion in general in low regard because it opposes science, knowledge and logic and too often provides an excuse to avoid thinking and making one's own reason based decisions.  Given the negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity one has to ask why politicians give such deference to to the religious.  Are they merely playing to the least intelligent and most easily duped?  Here are article excerpts:

1) A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity.

2) The study indicates that it is uncommon to meet someone who is both highly intelligent and is also (sincerely) highly religious.

3) This study doesn’t mean that there are not some highly religious people among intelligent people (law of large numbers). This is a probabilistic model.

4) Yes, there are very famous scientists who were also devout Christians, however, if you notice, this combination tends to decrease when the time period shifts to the 19th century and becomes even less common in the 20th century. Atheism (or similar) was a serious crime against the State until fairly recently (It still is in many countries).  

5. Not being religious, doesn’t imply being an atheist.

Psychology Today:

The key question of the study is why are religious people generally less intelligent? And the authors of the study did not shy away from the answer, offering three compelling explanations:

(1) Intelligent people are generally more analytical and data-driven; formal religions are the antithesis: they are empirically fluffy and their claims are often in direct contradiction with scientific evidence, unless they are interpreted metaphorically – but maybe intelligent people are not that keen on metaphor. Another way of putting it is that people with a high IQ are more likely to have faith in science, which isn’t religion’s best friends (yes, yes, I do know about Einstein’s quotes).

(2) Intelligent people are less likely to conform, and, in most societies, religiosity is closer to the norm than atheism is. Although this interpretation is based on extrapolation, it still makes sense: first, smarter people tend to be less gullible; second, in most societies religious people outnumber atheists and agnostics – though global levels of religiosity have been declining, and there is substantial cultural variability in religiosity levels.

(3) Intelligence and religiosity are “functionally equivalent”, which means that they fulfill the same psychological role. Although this intriguing argument contradicts points 1 and 2, it deserves serious consideration. Humans will always crave meaning.

Religion – like science and logical reasoning – provides them with a comprehensive framework or system to make meaningful interpretations of the world.

At times, religion and science are in conflict; but they can also act in concert, complementing each other to answer non-falsifiable and falsifiable questions, respectively. The authors conclude that some people satisfy their desire to find meaning via religion, whereas others do so via logical, analytical, or scientific reasoning – and IQ predicts whether you are in the former or latter group.

It is noteworthy that these three explanations assume that IQ influences religiosity rather than vice-versa, which seems plausible: IQ levels remain very stable after childhood, whereas religiosity levels keep fluctuating – childhood IQ predicts adult IQ, but childhood religiosity is a very poor predictor of adult religiosity.

 I am sure some will find all of this insulting or "elitist," but the next time you are forced to someone expounding on their religiosity, know that you are likely listening to either a dullard or someone - i.e., a "scamvangelist" - preying on the less intelligent.  Either way, it is not a positive phenomenon. 

Evangelicals See Trump Win As Their Own

As previous posts have explored, while the election last week was truly a divide between cities and modernity and diversity against rural backwardness and bigotry, the critical tipping point for Donald Trump came from evangelical Christians in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan (among other states) who voted for Donald Trump who they saw as their last best hope to stop cultural and demographic change that threatened their hegemony and ability to force their fairy tale beliefs on  the rest of society. Now, with Donald Trump the Electoral College winner, these people feel victorious and emboldened to pursue their message of hate against those who do not subscribe to their flawed belief system.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the phenomenon.  Here are highlights;

For months, Rose Aller kept her support for Donald Trump a secret from her colleagues at the Northern Virginia school where she works as a substitute teacher.

“You’re judged for your beliefs,” she said. “Our media branded you a racist, a bigot, a homophobe if you were Republican.”

So Aller stayed quiet. Only at church did she feel surrounded by people who think like her, people who were distraught by the changing values they saw around them and pulling for Donald Trump as their unlikely standard-bearer to bring their chosen Christian policies back into the White House.

 Eighty-one percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump. Aller, 46, came into school on Wednesday wearing a red-for-Republican T-shirt and beaming at a few other teachers who seemed jubilant instead of despondent about the election results. She wasn’t the only Trump supporter in school, it turns out.

And that night, at church, she was one of hundreds.

During the eight years of the Obama administration, white evangelical Christians, who make up one-quarter of the U.S. population, felt that culture moving away from them. They watched gay marriage become the law of the land and Christians come under fire for saying they didn’t want to provide pizzas or cakes or photographs for those weddings. They heard college students demand “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings”; they heard “Black Lives Matter” and didn’t understand when they were demonized for responding “All Lives Matter.” Their president disparaged people like them who “cling to guns or religion,” and then said that religious employers should subsidize their workers’ birth control and anyone should use any bathroom they like.

And then on Wednesday, evangelicals woke up remembering what it’s like to feel victorious again in American politics. . . . Hartford Seminary professor Scott Thumma, who studies megachurches and nondenominational evangelical churches, wrote in an email. “I have interacted with a few evangelicals since the election … and every one of them were proud and happy to have had a part in Trump’s election — not exactly because of who Trump is, but what he stood for.”

The morning after the election, Aller said, a black second-grader came into her school and declared, “Trump was elected, so we’re moving.”  Aller said she responded, “We’re going to miss you. Let me know when your last day is. We’ll throw you a goodbye party.” She says she’s sure the boy knew she was joking.

While Hispanic Catholics, Jews and some other faith groups voted heavily for Clinton, and white Catholics and mainline Protestants were more divided in their choices, voters like the congregants at Cornerstone turned out in force on Election Day. White evangelicals made up 26 percent of the electorate, according to the exit polls. Three percent more of them voted for Trump than had voted for Romney in 2012.

White evangelicals were so key for Trump that, had no white evangelicals voted, Clinton would have won in a landslide, 59 percent to 35 percent.

Many churchgoers echoed that idea and said that Trump seemed to support the sort of Bible-based morality they craved, which they imagine was standard in the bygone America he offers to bring back.

It’s like every day our morals in America are being chipped away. Now on the radio you can say words you couldn’t say eight years ago,” said Risvold, the military veteran.

“Hopefully, now we can see some progress for some evangelical causes in our country,” Gary Hamrick said. “I feel like we actually have an advocate now in the White House.”  He used another word, too, to describe the mood of white evangelical America waking up as victors once again: “Relief.”

I cannot imagine treating a second graders as described in the column.  The take away that must never be forgotten is that evangelical Christians are among the most selfish on the planet.  They are not kind, decent or compassionate despite their pretenses of piety and decency.  They will do anything to anyone rather than face the fact that their religious beliefs are based on myths and lies.  They, and now thier champion, Donald Trump, are a clear and present danger to America.  They need to become social pariahs and unwelcome by decent people - none will be welcomed in my home - and the media needs to cease affording them deference or any shed of respect.  The embrace of ignorance and bigotry towards others under the smoke screen of religious belief deserves ZERO respect. -

Illinois Christofascists Are Challenging Ban of "Conversion Therapy"

Conservative Christianity condones a great deal of child abuse, both physical and psychological, especially in the case of LGBT youth.  While it is bad enough to be raised in "Christian" household that sends the daily message that one is no good - inherently disordered if one is unfortunate enough to be raised Catholic as I was - things get even worse when you are sent to charlatans and the equivalent of modern day witch doctors who will try to "change" you even though every legitimate, science based medical and mental health association in America says so-called conversion therapy (i) doesn't work, and (ii) is dangerous.  From personal experience, I know "praying away the gay" is bullshit, doesn't work, and leads to constant self-hatred.  But for the knuckle draggers of the Christian right, science, facts and reality simply do not matter.  Now, some of these self-enriching charlatans are challenging Illinois' ban on conversion therapy for minors.  The Washington Post looks at this travesty.  Here are highlights:

A group of Illinois pastors filed suit against the state Thursday alleging clergy — because it violates their constitutional right to free speech and exercise of religion — should be exempt from a law banning counselors from trying to change a minor’s sexual orientation.

The law, which went into effect in January, bans licensed counselors and mental health professionals from practicing “conversion therapy” — counseling designed to make gay, lesbian, bisexual or queer people become straight — on minors. While religious leaders don’t fall under this category, the suit says pastors could be held liable for consumer fraud under a section of the law that says “no person or entity” may advertise or practice conversion therapy that “represents homosexuality as a mental disease, disorder or illness.”

And that’s exactly what the five Christian pastors think, according to their lawsuit filed in federal court.

“These pastors teach that homosexual conduct is contrary to God’s purpose for humanity and a disorder of God’s creation which can be resisted or overcome by those who seek to be faithful to God and His Word. This is what they say to those who seek their counsel—including minors,” according to the lawsuit,posted online by the law firm representing the pastors.

The pastors don’t want to dismantle the entire law — they just want an exemption for religious counselors. . . . . This law undermines the dignity and integrity of those who choose a different path for their lives than politicians and activists prefer,” the pastors’ attorney, John Mauck, said in a news release. “Each person should be free to receive Biblical and spiritual counseling from the pastor of their choice to help them orient their sexuality.”

Equality Illinois, an organization that lobbies for LGBT rights, condemned the lawsuit Thursday and said it is an attempt to set back the movement for inclusion for LGBT people.  “The law protects patients from harmful, coercive, and fraudulent treatments that attempt to change the unchangeable,” the organization’s CEO, Brian Johnson, said in a news release. 

“The idea that homosexuality is a mental disorder or that the emergence of same-sex attraction and orientation among some adolescents is in any way abnormal or mentally unhealthy has no support among any mainstream health and mental health professional organizations,” according to the American Psychological Association.

The text of the Illinois law echoes that idea. It reads,”Being lesbian, gay, or bisexual is not a disease, disorder, illness, deficiency, or shortcoming.”

Pastor Steven Stultz of Nu-Church Apostolic Ministries in Chicago . . . On his church’s website, homosexuality is listed as part of Satan’s strategy to “spoil” younger generations so that “their lives are tainted and they are of no use to the Lord.”

If there is anything that undermines personal dignity and integrity, it is Christianity and it's dogma that mankind is inherently damaged and that we are all "fallen" - even though the human genome project has proven that Adam and Eve never existed and that there was no "Fall"  and hence no need for a Messiah.  LGBT lives are ruined all because of myths and fairy tales.

When Will the Media Condemn All Homophobic Denominations?

If one takes the time to research the origins of homophobia, it always eventually traces back to Christianity and some of the ugliest passages of the Old Testament.  While many are quick to point to Islam as the main source of anti-gay animus in the wake of the Orlando massacre of 49 gays and gay allies, that assessment is ultimately incorrect since Islam adopted the homophobia that increasingly permeated Christianity.  Before this adoption of Christianity derived animus, Islam was relatively tolerant of those of different sexual orientations.  And while much progress been made in many Christian denominations in terms of how LGBT individuals are treated, the root causes of anti-gay hatred and animus remain alive and well in the Bible and the Old Testament in particular.  This fact made clear after the Orlando horror as a string of "Christian" pastors lauded the murderous rampage and others could not even bring themselves to note the sexual orientation of the victims - and their own complicity in maintaining an anti-gay atmosphere in society.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this lingering poison that taints Christianity.  Here are highlights:

After the massacre in Orlando, Fla., American religious leaders spoke in a largely unified voice, condemning the killer and mourning the dead. But at some extreme conservative Christian churches, there was another message: good riddance.

In the weeks since 49 people were slaughtered at a gay nightclub, remarks by pastors celebrating the deaths have brought attention to several outposts of anti-gay hostility across the country that until now had been operating mostly under the radar.

“The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die,” Roger Jimenez, a Sacramento preacher, exhorted his congregants on June 12, the day of the assault. “The tragedy is — I’m kind of upset that he didn’t finish the job! Because these people are predators! They are abusers!”

Rebecca Barrett-Fox, a visiting assistant professor of sociology at Arkansas State University who has researched Christian extremists, said she had tracked about five churches — in California, Texas, Arizona and Tennessee — where preachers had endorsed the killings in Orlando.

Many of the preachers identify themselves as so-called independent Baptists, meaning that they are not a part of any of the denomination’s groupings, such as the Southern Baptist Convention. Dr. Barrett-Fox said the Baptist emphasis on church autonomy — recognizing no central authority — allowed pastors to interpret the Bible for themselves.

The independent Baptist churches where anti-gay hatred has flourished tend to have small congregations, more likely to number in the dozens than the hundreds, experts said.

Sermons posted online since the attack have been interspersed with dehumanizing labels for L.G.B.T. people reminiscent of those used by the perpetrators of historical genocides. The Orlando victims were “sodomites,” “reprobates,” “perverts” and “scum of the earth,” preachers have said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, said it was alarmed by the comments of extremist pastors after the mass shooting in Orlando. Heidi Beirich, the center’s director of intelligence, warned that they should not be dismissed as empty rhetoric.

“I think it is entirely possible that someone could be inspired by this and kill gay people,” Ms. Beirich said. “This kind of message is exactly akin to Hitlerian ideas of exterminating Jews. It’s that extreme. It’s basically genocidal toward a population.”

However, while many conservative Christian leaders no longer want to be seen as anti-gay, the change in tone should not be interpreted as full acceptance, Dr. Barrett-Fox said. The “love the sinner, hate the sin” approach to homosexuality continues to be deeply woven into Christian thinking.

When all is said and done, Dr. Barrett-Fox said, “They don’t really believe that these people had a right to be peacefully doing what they were doing, partying at a gay bar.”

The bottom line is that until denominations fully and loudly reject the "love the sinner, hate the sin" approach to LGBT people, they remain an enemy and a threat.  Until the theology is fully repudiated, we cannot be lulled into thinking "they're not really so bad"  This applies to the Southern Baptist Convention, the Roman Catholic Church (not withstanding Pope Francis' latest disingenuous statements) and many other denomination. Saying words of condolence when we are murdered doesn't wash away the guilt that comes from the failure to reject anti-LGBT dogma.  Dogma that is based on ignorance and Bronze Age levels of knowledge. 

Catholic Church Hypocrisy and False Sympathy for Orlando Victims

Fr. Tony with Pope Paul VI

When I had the good fortune of being one of the 50 attendees at the December, 2008, LGBT Blogger Summit in Washington, D.C. - the event was underwritten by Microsoft and Progressive Insurance and hosted at the offices of the Center for American Progress - one of the bloggers I met was Tony Adams, a/k/a "Father Tony."   For background, Tony is a former Catholic priest who was once stationed at the Vatican.  There, he got to witness first hand the hypocrisy of the Church hierarchy on the issue of homophobia.  Suffice it to say, as Tony witnessed, there are MANY largely closeted, self-loathing gays at the Vatican.  Sadly, many of them (much like closeted Catholic Republicans such as Rick Santorum and Ken Cuccinelli) seem to direct their self-hatred at LGBT individuals.   

What is our main offense? We have found self-acceptance and moved forward with our lives as the Creator - whoever he/she/it may be - made us to be and in the process we have refused to subscribe to ignorant writings of unknown Bronze Age authors that denigrate us and deem us deserving of death.   We've found happy lives - unlike these high clerics- and worse yet, we have been role models for others in respect to throwing off the hate and misogyny marketed by the Catholic Church.   Despite their own complicity in fanning the flames of homophobia and anti-LGBT animus, in the wake of the massacre at a gay club in Orlando, many of these same self-loathing clerics issued meaningless statements of "prayers and condolence" for the victims and their families.  In a piece in the South Florida Gay News, Father Tony urges all of us to mark these hypocrisy filled statements back marked "return to sender."  Here are some highlights:  

The expressions of sympathy over Orlando sent by the Roman Catholic pope, cardinals and bishops in the form of sweet words for the victims and their families need to be returned to sender because no heap of flowers nor blazing bank of candles can glove the blood on the hands of those who daily condemn us in the name of their god.

The pope refused to mention the LGBT community in his official expression of horror at the massacre. He said, “We all hope that ways may be found, as soon as possible, to effectively identify and contrast the causes of such terrible and absurd violence.” He will not have to look far beyond his own house to find those causes of hatred. But how will he uproot them when he cannot even bring himself to say that the specific target of the gunman was the LGBT community? I suspect his heart is filled with guilt.

Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley says, “There is no place in the church and in society for hate and vilification of any person or group of persons. All people are created in the image and likeness of God, blessed with the gift of human dignity that calls for our respect and love.”  What he avoids mentioning is his belief that LGBT Catholics who have gay sex forfeit that God-given dignity and choose a clear and speedy road to hell. I do not think the 49 Orlando victims were celibate. Does he? In his heart, does he see their unrepentant souls in hell?

Chicago Archbishop Cupich said, “You know, 30 years ago the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a letter describing as deplorable the fact that some homosexual persons, as they put it, have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action […] they said that such treatment deserves condemnation from the church’s pastors whenever it occurs, so I believe it was important to raise my voice in this moment because this is what the church is asking us to do and has asked us to do for over 30 years now.”

If the directive has been in place for thirty years, his words invite us to ask the obvious. Could this slaughter have been avoided if this church had practiced what it preaches rather than effectively exclude LGBT souls despite all its rhetoric?

Cupich also calls for greater “outreach” to the LGBT community. Greater outreach? How about calling up all those Dignity chapters that were booted out of Catholic Churches and told they would have to hold their meetings elsewhere? How about apologizing for that and inviting them back? Until that happens, these official statements are just sweetly worded veneer over something rotten.

These insensitive patriarchs of Roman Catholicism have no right to jump on the bandwagon of Orlando grief in order to feel reconciled with those they continue to ostracize and persecute. To honor the victims, we must rebuff the Catholic bishops looking to be photographed with us in mourning just as they have shunned and excluded us from full celebration at their table. We should not allow the Catholic Church to enjoy its deceitful and self-serving performance unchallenged.

Locally, many Catholic parish priests stand by the open doors of their churches to receive the coffins of the victims and to recite traditional words of mercy and to sprinkle the remains with holy water, but these gestures are false. In life, the men and women in those coffins were not allowed to enjoy the consolation of the Catholic Church if they were openly and actively gay. In death, they are being used to assuage the guilt of their arrogant shepherds.

Only one Catholic bishop, the soon-to-be-retired Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Florida, goes beyond hollow rhetoric and owns his church’s complicity in the massacre when he says, “Sadly it is religion, including our own, that targets, mostly verbally, and often breeds contempt for gays, lesbians and transgender people.

Attacks today on LGBT men and women often plant the seed of contempt, then hatred, which can ultimately lead to violence.” This is not the first time Lynch has spoken with authenticity about LGBT issues. He will be missed.

The Roman Catholic Church is not the only church to have nurtured a culture of homophobia and fear that coaxes a maniac to murder, but it is first among many. Real sympathy calls for action. Orlando is an opportunity that will be ignored by Catholic bishops whose false requiems are unacceptable.

Tony is 100% correct. All decent, moral people need to shun Catholicism until Church dogma and the constant denigration of LGBT people ceases everywhere. The same goes for every other Christian denominations that clings to selected passages in Leviticus while ignoring the many dozens of other things labeled as "abominations" in Leviticus.  Passages written by unknown authors who knew NOTHING of modern science, modern medicine, mental health care advances, and a near limitless list of other types knowledge.  Embracing ignorance is a choice, as is supporting institutions that daily denigrate others and inspire hatred by their actions regardless of lip service to the contrary.  In contrast, being LGBT is not a choice -  it is simply who we are and no more of a choice than breathing. 

Christian Extremists Blame Gays and Abortion for California Mass Shooting

As seems to be thew norm nowadays when something terrible occurs, the "godly folk" and the parasitic professional Christian crowd - who need to whip the sheeple into a frenzy to keep the money coming in - blame gays and abortion as the real causation.  A case in point is Christian extremist Alex McFarland who says God allowed the San Bernadino shooting to occur because of abortion and the "mainstreaming of sodomy."  Under McFarland's fairy tale beliefs, e.g., that there is a mythical god such as he describes, one act of possibly religious based terror is the result of America's failure to subscribe to yet another form of extremist religious belief that would murder or at least denigrate millions of people.  McFarland concludes his hate fest by saying Barack Obama is a secret Muslim.  In my view, the real solution is to remove ALL religion form society and the world.  Right Wing Watch looks at the batshitery. Here are highlights:

Right-wing Christian apologist Alex McFarland was on Dove TV's "Focus Today" program yesterday to discuss the terrorist shooting in San Bernardino, California, earlier this week, which he blamed on abortion and gay marriage.

"People are saying, 'Why didn't God prevent this?'" McFarland stated, "Look, we've for 45 years told God to leave us alone. Fifty-seven to sixty million babies aborted, now our Supreme Court has deviated from natural law to case law and we've redefined marriage ... God forgive us for the murder of the unborn, God forgive us for kicking prayer out of public schools, God forgive us for making sodomy mainstream and redefining marriage."

"The greatest sin of all is abortion in our nation," he continued, "and the judgment of God only escalate until we turn to the Lord."

Later, McFarland declared that President Obama supposedly refuses to fight radical Islam because he is secretly a Muslim.

"In my heart, I'm going to be honest with you, I suspect he is a Muslim," McFarland said. "I really do."

No doubt "turning to the Lord" includes giving money to charlatans like McFarland.  The real evil in the world is religion which has hate and division as it principal fruits.