Recommitting to Resisting Trump and All He Represents

With the holiday season upon us and "peace on earth and good will toward mankind" purportedly in the minds of most citizens, it is time to recommit to those values.  It is also time to recommit to resisting those who are anathema to such values.  In particular, it means recommitting to resisting the toxicity and indecency of the Trump/Pence regime and its Republican enablers and hate filled, Pharisee like evangelical Christian supporters.  A column in the New York Times looks at this need for re-commitment and reminds us of all that is abhorrent about the Trump/Pence regime.  Here are column highlights: 

Last Thanksgiving I wrote a column titled, “No, Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along,” in which I committed myself to resisting this travesty of a man, proclaiming, “I have not only an ethical and professional duty to call out how obscene your very existence is at the top of American government; I have a moral obligation to do so.”

I made this promise: “As long as there are ink and pixels, you will be the focus of my withering gaze.”  I have kept that promise, not because it was a personal challenge, but because this is a national crisis.

Donald Trump, I thought that your presidency would be a disaster. It’s worse than a disaster. I wasn’t sure that resistance to your weakening of the republic, your coarsening of the culture, your assault on truth and honesty, your erosion of our protocols, would feel as urgent today as it felt last year. But if anything, that resistance now feels more urgent.

Nothing about you has changed for the better. You are still a sexist, bigoted, bullying, self-important simpleton. But now all of the worst of you has the force of the American presidency.

The legitimacy of your presidency is in question. The corruption of your administration is not. You are a national stain and an international embarrassment. You are anti-intellectual and pro-impulse. The same fingers with which you compulsively tweet are dangerously close to the nuclear codes. You are historically unpopular and history will not be kind to you. It is all so dizzyingly distressing.

But what irks me most is your targeted attacks on historically marginalized populations as a political ploy to secure the support of the racists, misogynists and homophobes. . . . Your hostility toward minorities and your courting and coddling of the people who hate them has become a standard practice of your presidency.

We see it in the way that you attack N.F.L. players protesting police violence, while you encourage police officers to be more violent. We see this in the way that your Justice Department is moving to return to rigid, racially skewed drug policies that helped to fuel our unconscionable level of mass incarceration, a phenomenon Michelle Alexander calls “the new Jim Crow,” while also returning to a reliance on private prisons.

We see this in the devastating contrast between the ways you have talked about and treated hurricane victims in Texas versus in Puerto Rico.

Trump is clearly, blatantly, virulently hostile to people who are not white and non-Christian. That is not a statement of opinion, but a statement of demonstrated fact.

[I]t is Trump who is proving to be a threat to the L.G.B.T. community, particularly to transgender Americans, with his ban on trans people in the military, his rescinding of federal protections for trans students, and his Justice Department’s reversal of a policy protecting trans workers.

[T]he “Access Hollywood” tape was released on which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women. And women came out in droves to personally accuse him of sexually inappropriate behavior, the kinds of accusations that people are now losing jobs over.
To add insult to injury, Trump the Groper has just thrown the weight and word of the presidency behind Roy Moore the Alleged Pedophile, choosing the claim of a single horrible man, even aside from the allegations, over nine women who seem to have nothing to gain by coming forward. Trump not only doesn’t respect women, he doesn’t even hear women.

This man is a pathological liar. He commends and conforms to anyone who pretends to love him, whether they are Russians or racists. He is inherently a patriarchal white supremacist and it seeps out in all sorts of ways, but it is most pronounced in the way that he attacks people who are not white and male. 

When you accept those truths, everything else makes sense. But accepting the truth is not the same as accepting the liar. Trump is unacceptable in every possible way, and must continue to be met at every turn with the strong arm of defiance. That is why today I recommit myself to resistance, and so should you.

And lest we forget the full Trump/Pence?GOP agenda, a second column reminds of the hideous aspects of that agenda.  Here's a short excerpt:

Meanwhile, everything this president and this Congress are doing on economic policy seems designed, not just to widen the gap between the wealthy and everyone else, but to lock in plutocrats’ advantages, making it easier to ensure that their heirs remain on top and the rest stay down.

It’s unclear whether the terrible tax bills being advanced by Trump and his allies will go through Congress; but environmental policy is largely set by administrative action, and this administration has been moving with stunning speed to get poisons back into our air and water. Not to mention the growing odds of climate catastrophe.

White supremacists are, of course, making a big comeback thanks to encouragement from the top. (They are, after all, “very fine people.”) So are anti-Semites, which is really no surprise to those who remember their history.

Even as old prejudices return, we’ve clearly entered a new age of politically potent anti-intellectualism. America built its world pre-eminence largely on the strength of its educational system. But according to Pew, 58 percent of Republicans now say that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country, versus only 36 percent who see a positive effect.

And I don’t believe for a minute that this turn against education is a reaction to political correctness. It’s about the nasty habit scholarship has of telling you things you don’t want to hear, like the fact that climate change is real.

Finally, we’re now ruled by people who have no interest in letting hard thinking get in the way of whatever policies they want to follow. 

Cheers Greet Rick Perry at Anti-Knowledge Liberty University

Here in the Commonwealth of Virginia one doesn't find a stronger anti-intelligence and objective reality denying crowd than among the religious zealots at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, although the loons at Pat Robertson's Regent University and Mike Farris' Patrick Henry College are not far behind in the race for complete idiocy. As noted before on this blog and elsewhere, Liberty University teaches its students to ignore the law, support kidnapping and to hold a blind allegiance to the belief that the Bible is inerrant no matter what science and rational intellect prove to the contrary. Hence, it was a perfect marriage of the dumb and dumber for Rick Perry to visit Liberty University and address the Kool-Aid drinkers. One can only hope that Perry's statements at Liberty gain wide play in the main stream media and help voters realize that the guy is an extremist. Here are highlights from Washington Post coverage:

LYNCHBURG, Va. — Texas Gov. Rick Perry is a man of faith, and one of the big questions about him has been whether he would seek the presidency more as an evangelist or as a job-creator.

On the debate stage, Perry decidedly has done the latter. But he demonstrated Wednesday that he would not shy away from cloaking his candidacy in his Christianity, delivering an address here at the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University that presented his life in deeply spiritual terms and cast his political aspirations as destiny.

In perhaps his most reflective and personal remarks as a Republican presidential candidate, Perry never once said the word he utters just about everywhere else: “jobs.” His 20-minute speech was shorn of policy prescriptions and denouncements of President Obama. Instead, the evangelical Christian governor spoke the language of the movement with ease.

“Rick Perry’s a more overt, less subtle guy than George W. Bush, and he is going to be more overt in his policy statements and his statements about his faith,” said Richard Land, a longtime leader of the Southern Baptist Convention

Perry said before an estimated 13,000 students and faculty members who filled the basketball arena here for their thrice-weekly convocation.

[Liberty Chancellor] Falwell said he would not endorse in the race, but gave Perry a particularly enthusiastic introduction Wednesday, calling him “one of the most pro-life governors in American history” and likening him to Reagan.

Absent from the list of those who’ve made a pilgrimage here is Perry’s top rival for the nomination, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who has rarely, if ever, publicly discussed his Mormon faith during his current campaign.

With his speech here, Perry drew one of his sharpest contrasts with Romney, as well as former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. The contrast was not only over religion — Huntsman, too, is Mormon — but over their backgrounds. Romney and Huntsman are sons of privileged families, but Perry spoke at length about his more humble origins.

British "Christian" Therapist Faces Loss of License for Trying to "Cure" Gays

In a move that I sincerely hope will begin to occur regularly in this country, a British therapist who claims to be able to "cure" gays through prayer faces disciplinary action and a possible loss of her license for engaging in discredited "therapy" to cure gays of their sexual orientation. I'm sorry, but in my view, one has to either embrace modern mental health and medical knowledge or get out of the profession and become some sort of religious organization functionary. One cannot be both and in this case I hope Ms. Pilkington loses her license to practice as a licensed therapist. If one wants to be a faith healer or, in my opinion, the equivalent of a witch doctor, then do not pretend to be a licensed therapist. Religious extremism need not be given credibility through those holding themselves a licensed mental health/medical providers. The Daily Mail has coverage and here are some highlights:
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A psychotherapist faces being struck off after trying to 'convert' a homosexual man. Lesley Pilkington, 60, a therapist for 20 years, is accused of 'praying to God' to 'heal' the patient . Mrs Pilkington, will appear at a landmark disciplinary hearing this week where she faces being stripped of her accreditation to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.
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The patient, a homosexual rights campaigner, secretly recorded her controversial treatment at two sessions before reporting her to the association. A small group of counsellors believe all men are born heterosexual, but some choose a gay lifestyle which can be changed through therapy. Mrs Pilkington, a devout Christian, told the Sunday Telegraph that her method - Sexual Orientation Change Efforts - is legitimate and effective.
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She treated journalist Patrick Strudwick at her private practice based at her home in Chorleywood, Hertfordshire, after he approached her at a Christian conference. He recorded the sessions on a tape machine strapped to his stomach. Asked if she viewed homosexuality as a 'mental illness, an addiction or an anit-religious phenomenon', she replied: 'It is all of that'. In the disciplinary letter sent to her by BACP, she is accused of having an 'agenda that homosexuality is wrong and that gay people can change and you allegedly attempted to inflict these views on him.'
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Her defence is being funded by the Christian Legal Centre which has instructed a leading religious rights barrister to fight the case.

Ireland Recognises Foreign Gay Marriage and Partnerships

It is interesting - and saddening as well - to watch as more and more nations of the world recognize same sex relationships either in the form of full marriage or in some form of civil union or domestic partnership. Meanwhile, the United States remains in the sway of Neanderthals who subvert the U.S. Constitution and make a mockery of the false promise of freedom of religion. Sadly, only those who conform to a falsely claimed "biblical" form of marriage are given legal equality. Unfortunately, it seems part and parcel with the increased embrace of ignorance and anti-modernity that can be seen in calls for treating creationism under the guise of intelligent design taught as science and the regression of society back toward segregation and intolerance. Driving this slide backwards are the Christianists and their GOP and Tea Party allies who will prostitute themselves to the basest elements in order to hold political power. In contrast, Ireland is now going to recognize foreign gay marriages and domestic partnerships as it prepares to grant Irish same sex couples partnership rights. It's an example of a nation once thought backwards leaping ahead of America and the power of the Catholic Church rightly dying out. Here are highlights from Pink News:
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Gay couples living in Ireland who have married or had a civil partnership abroad will be recognised as civil partners from today. The change is part of Ireland’s new civil partnership laws, which give gay couples almost all the rights of marriage.
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However, couples who wed in countries where gay marriage is legal will find their unions downgraded to civil partnerships. And some unions, such as French PACS, will not be recognised because they are deemed not to offer as many rights as Irish marriages or civil partnerships.
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Unions from 27 countries or states will be recognised; 17 of which currently give gay couples the right to marry. Couples will be automatically considered as civil partners and will not need to register.
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Brian Sheehan of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network said: “Same-sex couples who have already celebrated their relationships and made formal commitments to each other by having a civil marriage or civil partnership in another country will today have those relationships recognised in Ireland. This recognition will provide significant protections for these couples.” The first Irish civil partnership ceremonies will take place in early April.
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With both of my parents now gone, the question will be whether the boyfriend and I remain in the U.S. once his elderly parents have passed on. In my view, the USA is a nation in severe decline and which instead of embracing the future is too often either sliding back towards old prejudices or refusing to treat all of its citizens as equals. Added to the mix is a wealth disparity that would shock many in what were once viewed as banana republics.

More Double Standards [Hypocrisy] from Mindless Catholics

I get lambasted from time to time because of my unwavering demands that the Roman Catholic Church do a thorough house cleaning of the Church's hierarchy to rid the institution of those who participated in the enabling and covering up for sexual predator priests. This demand goes all the way to the current occupant of the throne of St. Peter who clearly seems to have less than clean hands in the matter. Meanwhile, apparently brain dead Catholics ranging from the servile boot lickers in the leadership of the Knights of Columbus to Catholic columnists and commentators continue to attack those who demand accountability from the Church hierarchy and the Pope rather than likewise demand that the moral rot at the Vatican and bishoprics be rooted out. Obviously, these "defenders" of the Church want Roman Catholicism to become the religion of solely ignorant third world populations. Yet another example of this ass backward reasoning comes from Catholic Insight which attacks the CBC for not publishing batshitery by Vatican sycophants who refuse to accept modern medical and mental health knowledge on sexual orientation and seek to yet again regurgitate the 13th century Vatican "natural law" idiocy. Here's a sampling of the simpering idiocy that is raised to serious discourse at Catholic Insight:
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Most Canadian academics and journalists are so in thrall to a perverse system of value relativism that they can no longer tolerate even the expression of public support for the traditional principles of Judeo-Christian morality. And nowhere is this malign censorship more evident than in the mass media.
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Take the CBC, for example. In an article published on its website It Gets Better: Trevor Ritchie on coming out (November 1), the author, a third-year student and gay activist at the University of British Columbia, advises "queer teens" that they have little to fear from publicly affirming their homosexuality. Ritchie assures: "Positive portrayals in popular culture, as well as individuals in the community providing positive role models, have made the rest of society understand that we are not that different, save for who [sic] we are attracted to...."
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That's typical of the CBC. Day in and day out, our national broadcaster serves up an unrelenting drumbeat of propaganda for homosexual acts, promiscuity, abortion and a range of other perversions. Of late, the corporation has even started slanting its news broadcasts in favour of legalized prostitution.
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Kevin G. McDonald, a CBC reader, listener and viewer in Halifax, has taken up this invitation. In response to Ritchie's article, he emailed a comment to the CBC, suggesting that: "Catholic youth struggling with same-sex attraction may want to consider the advice of the Catechism of the Catholic Church."
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Yet the corporation has refused to publish his comment. . . . Coming from a public broadcaster that gets more than $1 billion a year in taxpayers' subsidies, such censorship is completely unacceptable. What will the Harper government do about this scandal? Evidently, nothing. In reaction to a query from McDonald, Heritage Minister James Moore, the cabinet member responsible for the CBC, conveyed no response except that he does not get involved in "day-to-day operations at the CBC."
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Like it or not, the defenders of the morally bankrupt Catholic Church and its Medieval vintage of sexuality are increasingly on a par with witch doctors, voodoo practitioners and others who reject modern knowledge and modernity in general. Moreover, until such time as they demand that the hierarchy be purged of all who participated in the enabling and of and cover ups for predator priests - and that includes Benedict XVI - they lack any moral authority to lecture anyone.

Time Magazine Looks at Kookinelli

Virginia already has enough of an image problem nationally without Time magazine doing a story on Virginia's mentally disturbed Attorney General Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli who has a grasp of the concept of freedom of religion on a par with that of the Taliban. Indeed, if Kookinelli had his way, we'd have religious run school - run by Christianists, of course - science would revert to a 13th century Catholic Church model, and gays would be rounded up and expelled from the state or worse if we did not remain invisible. Kookinelli is far smarter than Sarah Palin, but just as insane. Add to all that the fact that Kookinelli is, in my view, a self-absorbed, narcissistic egomaniac and it's a prescription for disaster down the road. Virginia and the nation will be better off the sooner Kookinelli disappears from the political scene. Unfortunately, he will not go willingly. Here are a few highlights from the Time article:
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Since taking office in January, Virginia's new attorney general has sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its plan to regulate greenhouse gases, opined that Virginia can regulate first-trimester-abortion facilities as it can hospitals, advised that the state's public colleges lack authority to bar discrimination against gays and lesbians, tweaked the state seal to cover the bare breast of the Roman goddess Virtus and subpoenaed the University of Virginia to probe for evidence that a former professor manipulated climate-science research.
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This series of splashy brawls has sparked Cuccinelli's meteoric ascent from little-known lawmaker to the constellation of national conservative stars. "He's the complete package," says Richard Viguerie, a Virginia-based éminence grise of the conservative movement. "He's not just a social conservative or an economic conservative. He's willing to blaze new paths and buck his party. That's the test of true leadership."
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That's also why opponents have issued withering indictments of his activist tenure, blasting him as a culture warrior more interested in stymieing progressive policies or establishing himself as a boldfaced name than in carrying out the duties of his office.
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The judgment that colleges can't protect against antigay discrimination — which Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell overruled amid a frenzied backlash — came after Cuccinelli was asked to issue an opinion on the matter [by equally homophobic Del. Bob Marshall].
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Just as Sarah Palin harnessed Facebook as a medium to inveigh against Beltway elites, Cuccinelli has leveraged his niche at the nexus of politics and the law to stir up supporters. This is the paradox of the perch: he is an unabashed partisan elected to an office that prioritizes public service over politics, a defender of the Constitution eager to rewrite parts of it.
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In 2002 he won what had seemed to be a long-shot bid for the state senate, where he worked to curb abortions and crack down on illegal immigration, pushing measures to change the 14th Amendment's birthright-citizenship clause, allow business to sue competitors who employed undocumented aliens and rescind unemployment compensation for employees unable to speak English.
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Attendees at a recent Virginia Tea Party convention sported "Cuccinelli for President" stickers, and pundits have floated his name as a potential candidate in the state's 2012 Senate race against first-term incumbent Jim Webb (who says he's not interested) or the 2013 gubernatorial contest (which elicited less-definitive denials).
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To be sure, Cuccinelli's recent moves make it seem as if he is running for something.

Priest Who Says Being Gay is Normal Banned from Writing

Conservative - and some might argue, demented - Christians are continuing their rear guard effort of trying to stop the spreading acceptance of the fact that homosexuality is a natural occurring phenomenon in nature. The anti-modernity crowd likewise refuse to accept that all of the LEGITIMATE medical and mental health experts (i.e., those not funded by wingnut organizations) have concluded that sexual orientation is not something that is a choice or that can be changed. A new example of this ultimately losing battle is the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican (known as the Inquisition in past centuries) command that a priest who accepts modern knowledge no longer be allowed to publish any of his writings. The move echos that of Benedict XVI's predecessors who tried to silence those who said the earth was round and not flat and did likewise to those who said the earth orbited the sun rather than vice versa. One would think that given Church's centuries long record of being incredibly wrong on so many things, the Nazi Pope and his minions would have perhaps learned something. But such is not the case. This latest target of the Vatican's anti-modernity and anti-knowledge wrath is Capuchin priest Fr. Owen O’Sullivan who had the timidity to write that same-sex attraction is simply a facet of the human condition. Here are highlights from the Irish Times:
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AN IRISH Catholic priest has been banned by the Vatican from publishing any more of his writings after he suggested homosexuality is “simply a facet of the human condition”.
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This follows an article on homosexuality by Capuchin priest Fr Owen O’Sullivan, published in last March’s edition of the Furrow magazine. Described as “a journal for the contemporary Church”, the Furrow is published at St Patrick’s College Maynooth.
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Throughout history “same-sex attraction and acts have been a consistent feature of human life . . . Same-sex attraction is simply a facet of the human condition,” he said. He recalled church teaching says it is not wrong to be gay, ‘‘but it is wrong to act gay”. He suggested: “Imagine someone saying... ‘There’s nothing in itself wrong with being Irish... But that doesn’t mean you may act on it. So, no more Guinness, going to Croke Park, singing rebel songs into the early hours of the morning, waving Tricolours, no more craic.”
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The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican contacted the Capuchin secretary general in Rome with an instruction Fr O’Sullivan was no longer to write for publication without first having his articles approved by it.
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Capuchin headquarters in Rome contacted Fr O’Sullivan’s superiors. Contacted by The Irish Times , Fr O’Sullivan did not feel free to discuss it nor did Fr Ronan Drury, editor of the Furrow .
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The Catholic Church is losing membership all over the educated areas of the world. Idiocy like this situation will only serve to accelerate the Church's decline in the developed world (perhaps not a bad thing) and ultimately leave Catholicism as a religion of the ignorant and uneducated.

Christianity in Crisis - Faith versus Reality

I talk about religion frequently for several reasons. The most obvious one is that religion is the entire underlying cause for all of the disparagement and hatred directed towards members of the LGBT community. Time and time again the Bible is cited as the authority upon which we are cursed and hated. The Koran likewise condemns homoseual acts on its face. Without these writings, acceptance of LGBT individuals would likely be much diffferent. Indeed, in previous times same sex relations were common. One need only think of Greece, Roman and the Persian Empire for examples of this reality.

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The other reason I write on the subject of religion is because the world seems more and more at a crossroads where one must either accept objective truth and reality or engage in the equivalent of a self-applied lobotomy in order to blindly follow fundamentalist religious dogma. If you will, a struggle between modernity and superstition. In both the case of the Bible and the Koran they are the products of the work of failable men yet are held up by fundamentalist extremists as inerrant. Like it or not both are infused with the limited knowledge of the period in which they were written and/or compiled and are also colored by the particualr agenda of the authors. Increasingly, research and discovery of previously lost sources make the argument for inerrancy ridiculous on its face.

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Gays - because our existence and refusal to be silenced by Christianists - terrify the religious extremists because if the Bible is wrong about us, then the whole house of cards begins to crumble in the minds of our enemies. Their whole artifical world begins to collapse and they hate us intensely for it. Andrew Sullivan looks at this divergency between fact/reality and religious fundamentalism in what I believe is a good summation of the battle:
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[I]n order to study history and maintain one's beliefs, you either have to: 1) deny the facts; 2) develop some system of progressive revelation that encompasses God's guiding hand over history; or 3) revert into some type of mysticism.
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Christianity is in crisis - and in a deeper crisis, in my view, than many Christians are allowing themselves to believe. I start from a simple premise. There can be no conflict between faith and truth. If what we believe in is not true, it is worth nothing. The idea that one should insincerely support religious faith because it is good for others or for society is, for me, a profound blasphemy if you do not share the faith yourself. I respect atheists and agnostics who reject faith; I find it harder to respect fundamentalists - of total papal or Biblical authority - because of the blindness of their sincerity; but I have no respect for those who cynically praise religion for its social uses, while believing in none of it themselves.
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No educated Christian today can deny that the scriptures we have - copies of translations of copies of copies of oral histories - are internally and collectively inconsistent, written by many authors, constructed in specific historical contexts, reflecting human biases, and supplemented by several other gospels that at the time claimed just as much authority as those gospels eventually selected by flawed men centuries later.
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[T]he solid architecture of the faith we inherited has been exposed more thoroughly in the last few decades than ever before. There is no single authoritative text, written by one God, word for word true. There is a much more complicated series of writings designed by many men, . .
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The same, I think, is true of the papacy as an alternative to Biblical literalism. . . . I do not see how the limits and flaws of such total authoritarianism could have been more thoroughly illuminated than in the recent sex abuse scandal. When the man whose authority rests on being the vicar of Christ on earth consigns children to rape rather than tarnish the image of the church, he simply has no moral authority left. Yes, his position deserves respect. But its claims to absolute authority have fallen prey to the human arc of what Lord Acton called "absolute corruption".
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Yes, this intellectual sifting is hard and troubling to faith; yes, it may end with more mystery than clarity. But if our faith is to be true, it must rest on something more than denial of reality. It must rest on being the greatest experience of reality.

Inside Jerry Falwell's Reality Challenged Church

The Houston Chronicle has a piece that looks at the late Jerry Falwell's ultra-far right Thomas Road Baptist Church from the inside via a covert view by a journalist who attended the church for roughly two years prior to Falwell's death in 2007. Her experience and reflections in many ways confirm the need one needs to remain a "true believer" in such a congregation: intellectual laziness and a willingness to let go of objective reality. Indeed a willingness to close one's mind to anything that might challenge the dogma/snake oil often peddled. It is a mindset that I truly do not understand and find very disturbing in terms of its anti-intellectualism and anti-knowledge attitude in general. It is the mindset that leads to societal ignorance as exemplified by the gutting of history curriculum in Texas. Here are some highlights:
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Evangelical Christians were a mystery to Gina Welch. . . . So she decided to undertake an audacious experiment in the fall of 2005. She would go undercover and pretend to be one of them. And she would do it in — of all places — Jerry Falwell's church in Lynchburg, Va.
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One of the things she found troubling was what she calls “intellectual passivity.” The people she met were generally “uncritical of the institutions they subscribe to,” she said. “They toe the party line. They accept the mythology about gay people, about the environment, about the outside world without testing its truthfulness.”
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Welch also was bothered by what she saw as the church's emphasis on spreading the gospel over serving human needs. “What about poverty? What about discrimination? What about human-rights abuses?” she writes. “Where was the Christian outrage at so much heinousness in the world?”
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[I]t's hard to say I would undo what I did. I feel like what came out of it is something of value. It holds the possibility of a more authentic understanding of evangelicals. It's something that could potentially humanize a population that people who share my background have thought of as this mob of clones.”

Ken Cuccinelli's Backward Mindset

It seems this editorial cartoon in the Roanoke Times has Ken Cuccinelli and Bob McDonnell's number: anti-knowledge, anti-science, and anti-modernity - oh, and anti-gay too. As one who has always supported quality education, developments in Richmond are scary. I can only assume that next legislative session an attempt will be made to add creationism to the required public education courses.

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Like it or not, society is changing and Virginia needs to get onboard or be left behind.

University Can Reject High School Christian Courses

A federal court ruling in California has struck a blow for scientific knowledge and rational thought by finding that the University of California does NOT have to accept high school course credits for courses taught at Christian schools. No doubt, the Christianists will cry that they are being victimized and subjected to religious discrimination. Of course, the claims will be false (like most else this folks peddle) and the schools will remain free to teach whatever fairy tales they want. Just don't expect legitimate institutions of higher education to recognize religious indoctrination as substantive course work. If parents want to squander their money and send their children to the Christianist equivalent of a madrasas, that's their option (and their stupidity). But just maybe, some of them will wake up to reality and strive to get their children educated as opposed to indoctrinated. Here are some highlights from the Pew Forum:

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The University of California has the right to reject courses taught at Christian high schools, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday (Jan. 12). Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, Calif., and the Association of Christian Schools International claimed the university's review policy was unconstitutional because it refused to certify courses that taught creationism and other beliefs.
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"The district court correctly determined that UC's rejections of the Calvary courses were reasonable and did not constitute viewpoint discrimination," the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled. Students from private schools must meet certain high-school requirements before they are eligible to apply to an undergraduate campus of the University of California.
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The court ruled that evidence in the case failed to show that the university was discriminating on the basis of religion. "UC's policy and its individual course decisions are not based on religion, but on whether a high school course is college preparatory," the three-judge panel ruled.
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In my personal view, subjecting children to religious based propaganda and indoctrination which has no basis in object reality and which is directly contrary to legitimate scientific knowledge borders on a form of child abuse.

The Fight for Gay Marriage is America's New Civil Rights Battle

Richard Cohen - with whom I frequently disagree - has a column in the New York Daily News that correctly looks at LGBT rights and gay marriage in particular are today's civil rights battle. As with past civil rights issues such as women's suffrage and interracial marriage, the opponents of equality and modernity cite the Bible as their justification for discrimination and bigotry. WWJD? I suspect he'd reject the professional Christians and their followers, viewing them as today's Pharisees: sanctimonious, judgmental, self-absorbed and uncaring towards others. Here are some column highlights:

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The truth is that if Maj. Nidal Hasan, the accused killer of 13 people at Fort Hood, had entered the officers club there with a nice handbag on his arm, perhaps a Gucci tote, he would have been out of the Army by the end of the week. But since he was merely anti-social, a misfit, an incompetent psychiatrist and a likely Islamic fanatic, he was retained and promoted. This says something about America. On the subject of gays, we are a tad nuts ourselves.
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That irrationality comes at me on an almost daily basis. One of the most prominent and strongly held planks of the Republican Party's right wing - its only wing, it seems - is opposition to same-sex marriage. I know this from the sheer huffy-and-puffiness of commentators such as Bill O'Reilly.
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In a recent column, O'Reilly directed us to read something called "The Manhattan Declaration," . . . the longest section of the declaration - applies to same-sex marriage. It amounts, really, to a confession of confusion, a cry by the perplexed who have come to think that same-sex marriage is at the core - the rotten core - of much that ails our society. Everything from divorce to promiscuity is addressed in this section without any acknowledgment that same-sex marriage, like all marriage, is a way of containing promiscuity (or at least of inducing guilt) and that not having it would not reduce promiscuity in the least. This I state as a fact.
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The reasoning in the declaration is so contorted that it brings to mind the dire warnings from years past of what would happen if blacks and whites were allowed to marry - not to mention similar references to what the Almighty purportedly intended.
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In the end, the courts will decide this question. That's what they're there for. Then, I suspect, wedding bells will ring through the land - and, after a pause, America will wonder what the fuss was all about.
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Ultimately, the argument over gay marriage sybolizes the current battle of science and modernity against ignorance and religious superstition. A progressive future lies with a victory of the former. Should the forces of reaction win out, I fear for the future of the nation. Bob Felton at Civil Commotion had an apt description of this struggle:

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What is going on is an epochal fight for humanity’s future. . . . A portion of the world adopted a metaphysics, or theory of reality, which is mechanical, which strives to isolate causes and their effects, which believes the proper instrument for apprehending reality is the abstractions of a disciplined mind.
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What is really going on, worldwide, is that those metaphysical theories are in mortal combat [with religion/superstition] and the outcome is very much up for grabs; the good guys, the Newtonians, don’t have to win. Recall that Epicurus had improved Democritus’ theory of atoms, articulated an early version of Newton’s First Law of Motion, and set out an early version of evolution of by natural selection by 300 B.C. — and it lay dormant for nearly 2-millennia because the Catholic Church succeeded in suppressing it.
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Remember that the Dark Ages were a Western, Christian, not global, phenomenon. Islamic scholars were busy inventing algebra as Europe lay comatose under Roman Catholic rule, and the Chinese were busy mapping the cosmos. We are unlikely to see a reprise so awful as that, but the West — and the United States, in particular — are unarguably losing global influence before the onslaught of of fundamentalism, and that is the only possible end-point of the anti-intellectualism of the evangelical right, of its insanely literal interpretation of the Bible, and like movements afoot today in the Islamic world.
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It is not merely contemporary politics which drive this fight; it is the underlying theory of reality, and the modern Republican Party is on the wrong, backward-looking side.

Fundamentalist Christian "Logic"

I have commented a number of times before on the extreme efforts employed by fundamentalist Christians to avoid serious thought and logical thinking, not to mention a refusal to accept changing knowledge about the universe, human sexuality, etc. This cartoon I found a Joe. My. God. sums it all up perfectly.

Sarah Palin and Conservative Intellectual Suicide

As a former Republican, two things in particularly horrified me and drove me from the party: (i) the fusing of fundamentalist religion with civil laws, and (ii) the growing disdain for intellect and knowledge. Symptomatic of this was the way some City Committee members acted as if they had undergone lobotomies and would mindlessly parrot the latest bullshit being peddled by the likes of James Dobson and Phyllis Schlafly. Objective common sense and the concept that there might be more than one legitimate view on issues went out the window and the party increasingly has become almost like a cult. Sarah Palin's selection as John McCain's VP running mate seems to be the crowning example of this trend. In my view, she's ignorant, talks only in slogans, and thinks everything operates according to her whacked out religious views. She's the face of today's GOP - or what's left of a once rational party. The Wall Street Journal has a good column that looks at this. Here are some highlights:

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Finita la commedia. Many things ended on Tuesday evening when Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States, and depending on how you voted you are either celebrating or mourning this weekend. But no matter what our political affiliations, we should all -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- be toasting the return of Governor Sarah Palin to Juneau, Alaska.

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The Palin farce is already the stuff of legend. For a generation at least it is sure to keep presidential historians and late-night comedians in gainful employment, which is no small thing. But it would be a pity if laughter drowned out serious reflection about this bizarre episode. . . . . It was the result of a long campaign by influential conservative intellectuals to find a young, populist leader to whom they might hitch their wagons in the future.

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And not just any intellectuals. It was the editors of National Review and the Weekly Standard, magazines that present themselves as heirs to the sophisticated conservatism of William F. Buckley and the bookish seriousness of the New York neoconservatives. After the campaign for Sarah Palin, those intellectual traditions may now be pronounced officially dead.

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What a strange turn of events. For the past 40 years American conservatism has been politically ascendant, in no small part because it was also intellectually ascendant. . . . . So what happened? How, 30 years later, could younger conservative intellectuals promote a candidate like Sarah Palin, whose ignorance, provinciality and populist demagoguery represent everything older conservative thinkers once stood against? It's a sad tale that began in the '80s, when leading conservatives frustrated with the left-leaning press and university establishment began to speak of an "adversary culture of intellectuals."

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Over the next 25 years there grew up a new generation of conservative writers who cultivated none of their elders' intellectual virtues -- indeed, who saw themselves as counter-intellectuals. . . . . But their function within the conservative movement is no longer to educate and ennoble a populist political tendency, it is to defend that tendency against the supposedly monolithic and uniformly hostile educated classes. They mock the advice of Nobel Prize-winning economists and praise the financial acumen of plumbers and builders. They ridicule ambassadors and diplomats while promoting jingoistic journalists who have never lived abroad and speak no foreign languages.

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David Brooks noted correctly (if belatedly) that conservatives' "disdain for liberal intellectuals" had slipped into "disdain for the educated class as a whole," and worried that the Republican Party was alienating educated voters. I couldn't care less about the future of the Republican Party, but I do care about the quality of political thinking and judgment in the country as a whole. There was a time when conservative intellectuals raised the level of American public debate and helped to keep it sober. Those days are gone. As for political judgment, the promotion of Sarah Palin as a possible world leader speaks for itself.