Modernity is Sweeping Away Conservative Christianity

Via Civil Commotion I came across a post by far right Southern Baptist Convention leader Albert Mohler that works a larger commentary on the story line of Masterpiece Theater's Downton Abbey.  While Mohler grasps that the larger story line is the transformation modernity worked on Great Britain and how the old world was swept away, the irony is that he refuses to recognize that the public acceptance of his religious fantasy world is similarly being swept away.  His science rejecting, creationist religious belief system is as much an anachronism today as the great houses of the British countryside became in the wake of World War I.  And like the British landed gentry, Mohler tries to deny this reality.  Mohler doesn't "get it" or see that he and religious extremists/reactionaries like him are actually hastening the demise of conservative Christianity as they drive the younger generations (and many of older generations) away.  Here are highlights from Mohler's post that he ought to be applying to himself and the Southern Baptist Convention:

[M]ost viewers are likely unaware of what they are actually seeing. They are not merely watching an historical drama, they are witnessing the passing of a world. And that larger story, inadequately portrayed within Downton Abbey, is a story that should not be missed. That story is part of our own story as well. It is the story of the modern age arriving with revolutionary force, and with effects that continue to shape our own world.

Though by season four King George V is on the throne, the era is still classically Edwardian. And the era associated with King Edward VII is the era of the great turn in British society. The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed a great transformation in England and within the British Empire. The stable hierarchies of Downton Abbey grew increasingly unstable. Britain, which had been overwhelmingly a rural nation until the last decade of the nineteenth century, became increasingly urban. A transformation in morals changed the very character of the nation, and underlying it all was a great surge of secularization that set the stage for the emergence of the radically secular nation that Britain has become.

The signs of the Empire’s disappearance were there for all to see, even if most among the elites did their best to deny the evidence. The great landed estates were draining their lordly title holders of precious capital, and the economic arrangements that allowed the nobility to live off of their estates would never return. That is why so many English lords looked for rich American women to marry.

That larger story records a great shift in worldview, not merely a social transformation. The consequences of that larger story far exceed the story of a great English house and its inhabitants. In that sense, Downton Abbey is a parable of sorts—a parable that can teach us a great deal.

Those who subscribe to Mohler's world view are literally dying off.  Within a few more generations, if America is lucky, Mohler's world view will be largely extinct.  Mohler and the Christofascist can strive to deny reality and modernity, but ultimately reality will prevail.  

 

The Continued Decline of Christianity

A new piece at ABC News (Australia) has some bad news for the Christofascists and far right denominations who like to claim that it is only "liberal" denominations that are in decline - decline they say is linked to acceptance of homosexuality and a mindset which ironically is more in keeping with the true Gospel message than the hate and fear based swill that is the staple of conservative denominations.   The second telling fact is that where Christianity is ostensibly growing in the global south, one of the main attractions id the prosperity gospel that is being preached and the belief that joining neo-Pentecostal churches will help them succeed politically, socially and financially. The third interesting fact is that in the global north, the Catholic Church is growing only because of immigrants from the global south.  It has little to do with the embracing of the Gospel message of Christ.  Here are some article excerpts:

[T]he argument that mainline church decline is related to liberal tolerance and doctrinal fuzziness has remained prominent among American theologians and journalists, as evidenced by Mary Eberstadt's recent column in Time magazine, which declared that "orthodoxy is winning" in the cultural "war" over the identity of Christianity.

And yet there are a number of reasons for remaining dubious about such interpretations of trends in church-going in the United States, as well as in other countries in the "Global North." Let me here mention just two:

• Recent studies suggest that church-going among conservative evangelical congregations in the United States is now also in decline. Moreover, it is significant that Douthat and Kelley largely focused on church-going among Americans (which continues to report monthly church attendance of around 25% of the population), whereas elsewhere in the world, church-going is significantly lower. In Canada, less than 21% of the population attend church weekly; in Australia, the figure is only 20% of the population going to church once a month (and 10% weekly); in Britain, only 16% report going once a month. The steady decline in church attendance that these figures illustrate can no longer be presented as unique to "liberal" churches.
• It is misleading to suggest that all conservative churches grow simply by virtue of being "conservative." The supposedly unified "conservative" camp incorporates a range of church expressions that includes Protestant evangelicals, charismatic and traditional Roman Catholics, and Pentecostals. In Britain and North America, only Roman Catholics are experiencing any significant numerical growth, which has more to do with immigration patterns (Polish in Britain, and Hispanic in the United States) rather than any doctrinal or liturgical ethos. More to the point, growth of Christianity is really only occurring in the countries of the so-called "Global South." In those regions, this trend is largely restricted to the Pentecostal churches (particularly in the mode of neo-Pentecostalism).

These developments not only call into question the explanation for the decline of liberal churches offered by Kelley, Douthat and Eberstadt; it also implies that the challenges confronting both liberal and conservative churches in Europe and the United States may be more alike than is often assumed.

[T]hese concerns about the motivations influencing church-going among Christians ought to shift the focus of discussion from the decline of liberal Christianity, and toward those churches which are experiencing significant growth: neo-Pentecostal movements in the Global South. Although these movements have some roots in the Pentecostalism that emerged in California in the early-twentieth century, as well as in the charismatic revivals of the 1960s and 1970s, the neo-Pentecostal churches are notable for their emphasis on a single charismatic leader and the witnessing of miraculous signs, and for teaching a strong version of the "prosperity Gospel" (the belief that financial success is the result of divine blessing).

Sociologists studying the movement - preeminently David Martin - suggest that the popularity of these churches is related to the way in which Christianity is linked to access to power. People are drawn to the neo-Pentecostal movement because they believe that their participation will result in some tangible results: financial success, health, successful marriage and so on. It is perhaps thus unsurprising that, generally speaking, individuals in less developed countries, particularly those making the transition from rural areas to large urban centers, are most likely to attend neo-Pentecostal churches.

As it becomes clear that the fates of liberal and conservative Christianities may not be as distinct as is commonly assumed, the time has arrived for a re-evaluation of liberal Christianity. For conservatives, the task is to stop interpreting the demise of liberal congregations as a victory for evangelical Christianity, and to explore what might be learned from the fact that liberal Christianity's roots lie in the attempt to adapt and respond to cultural diversity and modern individualism. For liberals, the challenge involves far more than finding the courage to address the significant decline in church membership. Their task begins only after acknowledging that liberal Christianity has a real problem transmitting itself to subsequent generations...

Christians of all persuasions have good reason to distance themselves from the tendency to define churches by the terms of the "culture wars." Enormous theological, ecclesiological and missiological energy is being directed towards "winning" the battle over how to interpret same-sex relationships; meanwhile, both liberal and conservative churches are in sharp decline in the Global North. Both sides tend to explain the failures of their opponent as resulting from their problematic attitude towards homosexuality.

It is now clear, however, that such diagnoses are well off the mark. Articulating the "correct" position on homosexuality will not turn the tide of church decline. Should conservatives and liberals begin to admit this reality, perhaps then the ecumenical task of analysing the decline of Christianity in the Global North can finally truly begin.

Ireland - The Next Catholic Country to Approve Gay Marriage

This past week saw Uruguay enact full gay marriage and the French Senate approve both gay marriage and gay adoption, all but guaranteeing that gay marriage will be legal soon in France.  And these developments have taken place despite the strenuous - dare we say nearly hysterical - opposition of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy and its front organizations.   Now, it appears that Ireland - once a bastion of Catholicism where the Church wielded immense power - may be moving towards full gay marriage as well.  All of which, in the view of this blog is a very positive thing.  The Church needs to be pushed out of politics completely despite the hierarchy's longing of the "good old days" of the Inquisition and a time when the Pope could make rulers bend to his whims.  As the Irish Examiner reports, the Irish Constitutional Convention has approved a referendum of gay marriage an, based on recent polls and the Irish public's contempt for the Church hierarchy, the referendum will likely pass.  First these excerpts from the Irish Examiner story:

The Constitutional Convention has passed a vote calling for a referendum on same-sex marriage.

The Convention decided to recommend that the Constitution be changed to allow for civil marriage for same-sex couples, with 79 of the 100 members in favour of the motion.  Nineteen delegates voted against, with one 'no opinion'.

A report will now be drafted and the recommendations of the Constitutional Convention will now go to Government.

After the report is officially sent to the Oireachtas, the Government are committed to responding within four months by way of a debate in the Oireachtas and if it agrees with the recommendation to amend the Constitution, to include a timeframe for a referendum.

The result was announced by Convention Chairman Tom Arnold, to applause from the floor. 

As for the polls on public support, a story in the Irish Times earlier this year looked at the 75% of the population that supported civil marriage for same sex couples.  Here are excerpts:

There has been a 12 percentage point increase in support of same-sex civil marriages since 2008, according to a new poll.

The poll, which was carried out in late 2012 by Millward Brown Lansdowne for Marriage Equality, shows 75 per cent of people would vote yes in a referendum to extend civil marriage to same-sex couples. In 2008, 63 per cent of respondents said they would vote yes.

The only age range where the majority of people said they would vote no is the over-65s, which went from 27 per cent in 2008 to 43 per cent.

A further two out of three people said they felt Ireland’s reputation as a modern society will be strengthened by allowing same-sex couples to have civil marriages, while three out of five people agree that allowing same-sex couples to have civil marriages will promote a more tolerant environment in Ireland.

When asked about adoption, 69 per cent of people agree that being raised in a loving home by parents is a more significant factor for a child’s wellbeing than being raised by a mother and a father. A total of 54 per cent agree that same-sex couples should be legally allowed to jointly adopt a child.

All very good news for equality and modernity and bad news for the geriatric child rapist protectors in the Catholic Church hierarchy.

BRAZIL: Sao Paulo State Legalizes Gay Marriage

I have noted before how the United States - the self-advertised "land of liberty" and home of religious freedom - is increasingly looking like a theocratic Islamic state as it continues to bow to the religious bigotry of far right Christians who comprise a Christian Taliban even as other modern nations move toward marriage equality.  The Brazilian State of Sao Paulo has amended its laws to allow for same sex marriage and marriage visas will be issued to foreigners seeking to marry in Sao Paulo (pictured above), the largest city in South America.  Meanwhile in America we see bigoted asses like Justice Antonin Scalia who spout anti-gay animus as a badge of distinction.  The world is marching forward even as the Christofascists seek to drag America back to the Middle Ages.  Here are highlights from Brazilian Law Blog:

Brazil is about to see something that we only heard about from the United States: a massive movement of people going to one specific State, in order to get married there.  This is because São Paulo State (where São Paulo city is located) has updated its registration rules in order to allow the automatic registration of same sex marriages, without the need of a previous court order.

This change has followed, with some delay, a decision from the Brazilian Supreme Court regarding same sex marriage.  Therefore, foreigners who wish to marry same sex partners in Brazil will now be allowed a marriage visa, which is much easier to obtain than the civil union visa for same sex unions, which already existed.

I consider this a triumph  of law and civility. A good thing for Brazil, at last.  The link below is in Portuguese:

Folha de S.Paulo - Cotidiano - Norma do TJ obriga cartórios de SP a registrar casamento gay - 19/12/2012

The blog's author is a Brazilian lawyer who specializes in international business who has worked in Argentina, Mexico, India, England, China and Dubai, in addition to having extensive experience in Brazil.

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Why Are Muslims - and Fundamentalists in General - So Easily Offended?

An op-ed in the Washington Post looks at the question of why the Muslims in the Arab world are so easily offended by what they perceive to be insults to  Islam in general or Mohammad in particular.   It's a question that, in my view, also applies to Christian fundamentalists who seem to look for what they describe as insults to their religious beliefs.  In both instances, there is a huge fear of modernity and an unspoken fear that what if critics are correct in their condemnation of fundamentalist faiths?  Too many of the adherents fear the same thing: having to think for themselves and having to formulate their own moral decisions in a world vastly different that that in which both Christianity and Islam first arose.  

And as the article in the Post also indicates, there is a huge sense of inferiority because the glories of the past for both religions have been lost.  Once the Catholic Church and Islam both fostered and protected knowledge of the past and respected learning.  Now, one can argue that the inflexibility and refusal to accept modern knowledge are at the root of the very causes for the decline of the intellectual levels of both Christianity and Islam.  Sooner or later modernity and new knowledge make old beliefs become untenable except for those who consciously decide to remain ignorant.  Any religion that refuses to change and adapt and which requires the equivalent to a lobotomy to maintain unchallenged belief is doomed to eventually die.  Just as we are seeing the slow death of Christianity in the western world because of conservative Christianity's refusal to change.  Conservatives in both Christianity and Islam are unwittingly the worse enemies of both faiths.  Here are some column excerpts:

Modernity requires the willingness to be offended. And as anti-American violence across the Middle East and beyond shows, that willingness is something the Arab world, the heartland of Islam, still lacks.

Time and again in recent years, as the outside world has battered the walls of Muslim lands and as Muslims have left their places of birth in search of greater opportunities in the Western world, modernity — with its sometimes distasteful but ultimately benign criticism of Islam — has sparked fatal protests. To understand why violence keeps erupting and to seek to prevent it, we must discern what fuels this sense of grievance.

There is an Arab pain and a volatility in the face of judgment by outsiders that stem from a deep and enduring sense of humiliation. A vast chasm separates the poor standing of Arabs in the world today from their history of greatness. In this context, their injured pride is easy to understand.

In the narrative of history transmitted to schoolchildren throughout the Arab world and reinforced by the media, religious scholars and laymen alike, Arabs were favored by divine providence. They had come out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, carrying Islam from Morocco to faraway Indonesia. In the process, they overran the Byzantine and Persian empires, then crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Iberia, and there they fashioned a brilliant civilization that stood as a rebuke to the intolerance of the European states to the north. Cordoba and Granada were adorned and exalted in the Arab imagination. Andalusia brought together all that the Arabs favored — poetry, glamorous courts, philosophers who debated the great issues of the day.

If Islam’s rise was spectacular, its fall was swift and unsparing. This is the world that the great historian Bernard Lewis explored in his 2002 book “What Went Wrong?” The blessing of God, seen at work in the ascent of the Muslims, now appeared to desert them. 

The coming of the West to their world brought superior military, administrative and intellectual achievement into their midst — and the outsiders were unsparing in their judgments.

Even as Arabs insist that their defects were inflicted on them by outsiders, they know their weaknesses. Younger Arabs today can be brittle and proud about their culture, yet deeply ashamed of what they see around them. They know that more than 300 million Arabs have fallen to economic stagnation and cultural decline.   .   .   .   .   In the privacy of their own language, in daily chatter on the street, on blogs and in the media, and in works of art and fiction, they probe endlessly what befell them.  But woe to the outsider who ventures onto that explosive terrain. The assumption is that Westerners bear Arabs malice, that Western judgments are always slanted and cruel.

We know the celebrated cases when modernity has agitated the pious. A little more than two decades ago, it was a writer of Muslim and Indian birth, Salman Rushdie, whose irreverent work of fiction, “The Satanic Verses,” offended believers with its portrayal of Islam.  .   .   .   .   The confrontation laid bare the unease of Islam in the modern world.

The storm that erupted this past week at the gates of American diplomatic outposts across the Muslim world is a piece of this history. As usual, it was easily ignited.

It is never hard to assemble a crowd of young protesters in the teeming cities of the Muslim world. American embassies and consulates are magnets for the disgruntled. It is inside those fortresses, the gullible believe, that rulers are made and unmade. Yet these same diplomatic outposts dispense coveted visas and a way out to the possibilities of the Western world. 

The ambivalence toward modernity that torments Muslims is unlikely to abate. The temptations of the West have alienated a younger generation from its elders. Men and women insist that they revere the faith as they seek to break out of its restrictions. 

Cultural freedom is never absolute, of course, and the Western tradition itself, from the Athenians to the present, struggles mightily with the line between freedom and order. In the Muslim world, that struggle is more fierce and lasting, and it will show itself in far more than burnt flags and overrun embassies.

One huge irony is that the Christofascist elements in America - especially in today's Republican Party - hate and condemn Muslims when in fact both the condemned and those that condemn them suffer from the same affliction: a refusal to adapt to a changing world and to admit any possibility that maybe, just maybe, their religion doesn't have all the answers.  For both fundamentalist Christians and Muslims this truth threatens their flimsy house of cards world view and fabricated definition of who they are.  It terrifies both groups and outrage and violence are the natural fruits of closed minds and limited world views.  As they fight against modernity and knowledge, Pope Benedict XVI and the ayatollahs have more in common than either would like to admit.  I've often said that gays are so hated by both groups of fundamentalists because our existence suggests that perhaps the Bible and the Koran are in error.

Is Christianity Dying?

An op-ed in the New York Times looks at the decline of liberal Protestant denominations and is critical of these churches that are trying to change with the times and society.  But the malaise isn't limited to liberal denominations - e.g., Episcopal Church, ELCA, etc. - and the Catholic Church in the USA would have recoded significant declines but for the influx of Hispanic immigrants.  With that wave of immigration slowing, the real story may begin to make itself evident.  On the conservative end of the spectrum, the Southern Baptist Convention is struggling as younger members leave once they go off to college.  Yes, some of the mega churches are growing, but having gone to some of them in the past, they seem most focused on the prosperity gospel and provide services that are more akin to a stage production than any traditional connotation of a church service.  

Personally, I believe the real problem for Christianity is that it is based on a book that is increasingly shown to be untrue -the scientific evidence of the non-existence of Adam and Eve is perhaps the most damaging example of late.  With out the fall of man as focused on Adam and Eve, the entire redemption story line leading to Christ falls apart.   Church then ultimately becomes a social outlet that people go to in order to feel better about themselves or on occasion do good works.  With more and more competing social outlets, the attraction simply is falling away.  That leaves denominations left with fear and/or instilled guilt - specialties of the Roman Catholic Church - as the only real stick to keep people coming through the door.  And with the decline of liberal denominations, the intolerant, generally hate-filled message of far right churches increasingly becomes the face of Christianity.  The result? Almost a third of the milennial generation has walked away for organized religion because of its ugly image and ugly conduct towards so many in society.  Here are some op-ed highlights:

IN 1998, John Shelby Spong, then the reliably controversial Episcopal bishop of Newark, published a book entitled “Why Christianity Must Change or Die.” Spong was a uniquely radical figure — during his career, he dismissed almost every element of traditional Christian faith as so much superstition — but most recent leaders of the Episcopal Church have shared his premise. Thus their church has spent the last several decades changing and then changing some more, from a sedate pillar of the WASP establishment into one of the most self-consciously progressive Christian bodies in the United States.

Yet instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace. Last week, while the church’s House of Bishops was approving a rite to bless same-sex unions, Episcopalian church attendance figures for 2000-10 circulated in the religion blogosphere. They showed something between a decline and a collapse.

This decline is the latest chapter in a story dating to the 1960s. The trends unleashed in that era — not only the sexual revolution, but also consumerism and materialism, multiculturalism and relativism — threw all of American Christianity into crisis, and ushered in decades of debate over how to keep the nation’s churches relevant and vital.

Traditional believers, both Protestant and Catholic, have not necessarily thrived in this environment. The most successful Christian bodies have often been politically conservative but theologically shallow, preaching a gospel of health and wealth rather than the full New Testament message. 

But if conservative Christianity has often been compromised, liberal Christianity has simply collapsed. Practically every denomination — Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian — that has tried to adapt itself to contemporary liberal values has seen an Episcopal-style plunge in church attendance.

But if liberals need to come to terms with these failures, religious conservatives should not be smug about them. The defining idea of liberal Christianity — that faith should spur social reform as well as personal conversion — has been an immensely positive force in our national life. No one should wish for its extinction, or for a world where Christianity becomes the exclusive property of the political right. 

What should be wished for, instead, is that liberal Christianity recovers a religious reason for its own existence. As the liberal Protestant scholar Gary Dorrien has pointed out, the Christianity that animated causes such as the Social Gospel and the civil rights movement was much more dogmatic than present-day liberal faith.

Frankly, I believe the decline is irreversible and will likely accelerate as the backward and reactionary conservative denominations drive even more members of the younger generations away from organized religion entirely.

The Catholic Church's Fading Influence in Poland

With the fall out of the sex abuse scandal that continues to explode all around the world (Australia for example is lately seeing case after case of the now familiar pattern of enabling of and cover up for known predators), the Church's reactionary rejection of modern knowledge and science, and the Church's anti-gay jihad, the Roman Catholic Church is largely in a much deserved free fall in the Western world.  In Ireland, once a bastion of Catholicism, the Church's reputation and influence has suffered irreparable damage.  Now Poland, another former bastion seems to be headed the way of Ireland.  Indeed, the only growth areas for the Church are in backward and uneducated areas such as Africa where ignorance and naivete have so far protected the Church's reputation.  Der Spiegel has an article on the Church's decline in Poland.  Here are some excerpts: 

Twenty years ago, the Catholic Church played a major role in the fall of communism in Poland. Today, with the country changing rapidly, the church's influence is quickly waning. Once considered the most Catholic country in Europe, the faithful are vanishing. 

Just past the Polish border, passengers traveling by train from Berlin to Warsaw can see Jesus. He is 36-meters (118 feet) tall, made of concrete, and towers over the surrounding fields near the town of Swiebodzin, a gilded crown perched nobly on his head. His gaze is directed over the Recaro plant, which makes car seats and is the region's biggest employer, and toward the setting sun. His outstretched arms seem to suggest that he wishes to take the Western heathens into his heart.

The plaque at the base of the giant religious statue says that Jesus Christ is the true king of Poland and will rule for eternity. It is not for nothing that the country is, in the eyes of the church at least, Europe's most Catholic nation.

Some 95 percent of all Poles still say that they are Catholic. Yet loyalty to the church is waning. Even the conservative Catholic publicist Tomasz Terlikowski estimates the true number of devout Catholics at little more than 20 percent. "We Poles like to proclaim our Catholicism," he says, but the reality looks quite different.

Only slightly more than 44 percent of young people say they go to church on Sundays, compared with 62 percent in 1992. Forty-two percent admit that they do not observe all religious commandments. Hardly anyone pays attention to rules about things like sexual abstinence before marriage anymore. The number of illegal abortions runs into the hundreds of thousands every year. In addition, four-fifths of Poles are bothered by the fact that the church regularly intervenes in politics.

[T]he church has failed to keep up with the modern age, says Barto. Many of his fellow Poles agree.
After joining the European Union, Poland turned to the West and embraced the Western lifestyle more than almost any other country. Nowadays, Polish women dream of careers, self-fulfillment and children. Hundreds of thousands of young Poles live together without being married. In booming cities like Warsaw and Poznan, gays and lesbians live their lives as openly as in Berlin or Madrid.  "More and more taboos are falling by the wayside. But the church reacts by hardening its positions even further," says Barto.

The church is short on answers to the challenges it faces in booming Poland. The priests routinely react to job market volatility and long working hours, emigration and return, stress and careers by invoking earlier, more pious times.

"In reality," says former monk Barto, "most clergymen are preoccupied with internal power struggles. If there is anyone who is especially ill-suited to teaching people ethical behavior, it's a scheming church leader."

I would certainly second the last sentence quoted.  Moral bankruptcy is the principal hallmark of the Church hierarchy and I would argue that most atheists are likely far more ethical than the Church's bishops, cardinals, and yes, the Pope.  Greed, secrecy and the quest for power and control are their main characteristics and objectives.

Tonight's Republican Debate: The 19th Century or the Stone Age?

I watched some of the GOP presidential candidate debate - or as much of it as I could stomach after a crazy day at the office and a non-profit board meeting after office hours. Suffice it to say, I was not overly impressed and the only candidate who seemed to want to discuss the bigger picture of the nation's future was Jon Huntsman. Most of the other seemed to be seeking to focus on pet issues of the Tea Party in the hopes that some of the looniest elements of the GOP base would be driven to orgasms by the effort. Some, like Rick Perry fluffed facts and figures so much that one almost expected him to say he could turn chicken shit into caviar. For the most part, I could not help but think "God help this country if one of these nutcases gets elected." Robert Reich has a column at Huffington Post which looks at the backward thinking that seems to predominate the GOP candidate slate. Here are some highlights:

Tonight a bevy of Republican presidential hopefuls hope to emerge as finalists. Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann will battle for the right-wing nut Tea Party finals. Mitt Romney and John Huntsman will position themselves for the moderate right-wing finals. The putative winners in both these rounds will take on each other in the months ahead.

Nonetheless, listen tonight, if you can bear it, for anything other than standard Republican boilerplate since the 1920s -- a wistful desire to return to the era of William McKinley, when the federal government was small, the Fed and the IRS had yet to be invented, state laws determined worker safety and hours, evolution was still considered contentious, immigrants were almost all European, big corporations and robber barons ran the government, the poor were desperate, and the rich were lived like old-world aristocrats.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, the Republican Party had a brief flirtation with the twentieth century. Mark Hatfield of Oregon, Jacob Javits and Nelson Rockefeller of New York, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, and presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon lent their support to such leftist adventures as Medicare and a clean environment. Eisenhower pushed for the greatest public-works project in the history of the United States -- the National Defense Highway Act

But the Republican Party that emerged in the 1970s began its march back to the 19th century. By the time Newt Gingrich and his regressive followers took over the House of Representatives in 1995, social conservatives, isolationists, libertarians, and corporatists had taken over once again.

Some Democrats are quietly rooting for Perry or Bachmann, on the theory that they're so extreme that they'll bolster Obama's chances for a second term and make it easier for congressional Democrats to scare Independents into voting for a Democratic House and maybe even Senate.

I understand the logic but I'd rather not take the chance. A Perry or Bachmann wouldn't just take us back to the 19th century. They'd take us back to the stone age.

Hawaiian House Passes Civil Unions

The haters at NOM and the professional Christian set will be whining and spraying spittle all about over today's vote in the Hawaii House of Representatives that passed a bill to legalize civil unions for same sex couples. The bill has to go back to the Senate which has already passed a similar bill. Thus, Hawaii is poised to join the list of states that truly honor the constitutional right to freedom of religion - not to mention equal rights for all citizens. Obviously, I applaud the result - although full blown marriage rights would have been a better result. But I will take an incremental approach as opposed to nothing. The march toward equality, modernity and the acceptance of modern medical and mental health knowledge continues to advance despite the hysterical rear guard efforts of Bible beating Neanderthals and self-enriching professional Christian whores like Maggie Gallagher. Here are some highlights from the Star Advertiser:
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State House members approved a proposal today to legalize civil unions in Hawaii. Members approved the proposal by a 31-19 vote. One member, Rep. Rida Cabanilla, was absent. The bill now goes back to the Senate, which passed a similar version of the measure last month. If the Senate agrees to changes in the bill made by the House, the measure would go to Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who supports civil unions legislation.
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Senate Bill 232 would grant same-sex and heterosexual couples the ability to enter into a civil union with all of the rights, protections, benefits and responsibilities of traditional marriage.
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The House changes — recommended by the state Attorney General's Office — clarify that because civil unions will not be recognized under federal law, certain provisions of the Internal Revenue Code that apply to husbands and wives in Hawaii would apply with the same force and effect to partners in civil unions. Family Court will also have jurisdiction in matters of annulment, divorce and separation in civil unions, as the court does over marriages.
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Senate Judiciary Chairman Clayton Hee has said the changes appear reasonable and he believes the Senate’s inclination would be to agree to the changes and send the bill to the governor.

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As more states afford same sex couples legal recognition, the pressure will mount on reactionary backwaters like Virginia to either move into the 21st century or else find themselves increasingly non-competitive in the global labor and business market.

The Sad Spectacle of John McCain and the Arc of History

There are those who have the ability to tap into the sense of changing times and then there are those who insist on closing their eyes and refusing to accept the reality of societal change. John McCain - who I enthusiastically supported when he was running for president in 2000 - has proven himself to fall into the alter category. Ironically, his wife and daughter Meghan understood the changing times, while McCain himself refused to do so and likely tarnished his image for posterity. His opposition to DADT and the expansion of equality to more citizens - and his selection of Sarah Palin, an intellectual cretin - to satisfy the most intolerant and bigoted segments of U.S. society may well be what he is remembered for above all else. Given his re-election for another 6 year term at his age, one might have thought that he'd realize that he'd likely never see another re-election campaign and give into his better muses, but such was not the case. I'm now embarrassed to say I ever though well of the man. A column in the Washington Post looks at McCain's sad spectacle in the Senate today. Here are highlights:
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It doesn't take much to set off McCain these days. Earlier in the week, he was observed in the unseemly act of publicly gloating on the Senate floor over his success in killing a massive spending bill. He's also been raising hurdles to the ratification of the Obama administration's nuclear arms treaty with Russia. At the same time, he led the opposition Saturday to repealing the ban on openly gay men and lesbians serving in the military - taking on Lieberman, who led the other side.
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McCain's statement on the floor was roughly one part argument, four parts tantrum. "So here we are about six weeks after an election that repudiated the agenda of the other side," he said, and those who would repeal don't-ask-don't-tell "are acting in direct repudiation of the message of the American people." (Actually, polls show support for repeal.)
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He bemoaned "this bizarro world that the majority leader has been carrying us in," and taunted: "Maybe it will require another election." The Arizonan suggested those who vote to repeal would have blood on their hands. "Don't think that it won't be at great cost," he said, punctuating his words by bouncing on his toes and chopping with his left hand. It will "probably," he said, "harm the battle effectiveness which is so vital to the survival of our young men and women in the military."
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On Saturday, McCain's rage was all the more striking because the general tone of the debate was tame. Republicans were mostly defensive, objecting not to the service of homosexuals in the military but to procedures and other technical matters. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said of the repeal: "Should it be done at some point in time? Maybe so, but in the middle of a military conflict is not the time to do it." Such tactical arguments made it appear that the opponents were standing against the inevitable tide of history.
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I believe that equality and the religious freedom promised by the U. S. Constitution but long denied to LGBT Americans won out today. The forces that rail against modernity and seek to inflict on religious based discrimination on gays will continue to foment hatred, but their days are limited and soon they will join the ranks of past members of the Klu Klux Klan who are viewed with horror by later generations. Andrew Sullivan summed up well what happened today in my view:
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What the gay rights movement should, in my view, be about is not the creation of a separate, protected class of victims. It should be about enlarging the circle of human freedom so that there are no excuses left, no classes of pre-ordained victims, just individual citizens living different lives with no group-based discrimination.
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This does not deny the uniqueness of different cultures, the value of a distinct minority, the differentness of race and gender and orientation and religion and geography. It merely says that politics should be indifferent to this cacophony of voices and carnival of color. Politics should merely address those core civil inequalities that keep groups separate, alien and mutually suspicious. By removing the bar on military service and the bar on marriage, the gay rights movement is, slowly, increasingly, making America more whole and the gay rights movement obsolete. I long for that day. But I will always cherish this one.

Catholic Church in Steep Decline in Poland

The 12th Century minded Pope Benedict XVI has said that one of the goals of his papacy was/is to revive Christianity - Catholicism in particular - in Europe. Increasingly, however, it seems that instead he is overseeing the Church's wake on that continent instead. And deservedly so in light of the Church's worldwide sex abuse scandal and the ever increasing evidence that secrecy, cover ups, and an utter disregard for the welfare of children and youths was and remains the norm for the Church hierarchy. Yes, there are crocodile tears shed when the truth of the abuse comes out in the news media, but most responsible in the hierarchy have gone totally unpunished. Added to this phenomenon is the Church's refusal to accept modern medical, scientific and mental health knowledge - a refusal that is all the more evident given the free flow of information via the Internet. Catholic Spain - once reliable from the Vatican perspective - now has gay marriage and abortion. And now, according to a New York Times story, the Church finds itself in free fall in Poland, yet another once reliable bastion of Catholicism. To my view, the Church leadership has brought most of this on itself and it looks increasingly that those who claim to want to "save the Church" are the ones killing it. The irony is just too delicious. Here are some highlights from the Times story:
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Poland is still an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nation, still conservative and still religious, especially when compared with its European neighbors. But supporters and critics of the Roman Catholic Church all acknowledge that the society is changing. They agree that church representatives in Poland have lost authority and credibility, and that much of the population is moving toward a more secular view of life, one with a greater separation between church and state, and a rejection of church mandates on individual morality.
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Poles cite a wide variety of reasons for the church’s declining influence. They say the dynamic gained momentum after the death in 2005 of the hugely popular Pope John Paul II, whose leadership is credited with helping bring down the Iron Curtain.
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Church critics and supporters said that the trend was partly an expression of disgust with the clergy for taking sides in recent political battles, and partly the influence of thousands of Poles who had returned home after working and studying in the more secular societies in the West.
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But they also said there was a strong anticlerical movement in Poland, one that was unique to this nation and not tied to the sex scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church elsewhere. It is more closely linked to an almost genetic predisposition to rebel against authority, many people here said, as much as the church’s often heavy-handed intervention in national politics and debates over social issues, particularly in vitro fertilization.
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The list of grievances against the church tends to be Polish specific: that it managed to recover its property after Communism, but that average people often could not; that it appeared to take sides in politics . . .
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Antichurch sentiment has run so hot that one of the most popular politicians in the country, Janusz Palikot, started a political party based largely on an anticlerical platform. He said that the national divide tended to be generational, with older citizens more closely aligned with the church, but that it was impossible to discern distinct boundaries.

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The Church truly seems headed towards a day where its sole center of influence will be limited to backward countries with uneducated populations, primarily in Africa. And Rome will have accelerated the trend by insanely clinging to 12th century dogma and "natural law" arguments now refuted by modern knowledge.

Northrop Grumman Will Move Headquarters to Northern Virginia

Throughout this controversy of where Northrop Grumman would relocate its headquarters I have had mixed emotions: a rejection of a Virginia location could be blamed on the reactionary regime of Taliban Bob McDonnell while having the corporate giant come to Virginia would ad another business voice to bring the state into the 21st century. No doubt, Taliban Bob will seek to take the credit, but as the Washington Post reports Northrop CEO Bush told Maryland Governor O'Malley that they "had been impressed with Maryland's package of incentives but were making what amounted to a real estate decision." Historically, it has been Virginia's large businesses - e.g., Capital One - that have pressured the Neanderthals in the Virginia General Assembly to pass more LGBT friendly laws. There's a LONG way to go, but if Northrop Grumman ads it voice to modernity, long term LGBT Virginians will likely benefit. It's also fun to note as does Blue Virginia - that McDonnell got snubbed by Northrop Grumman:
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Northrop Grumman's chief executive officer, Wes Bush, telephoned U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., late this afternoon to inform the former governor of the company's decision to move to Virginia.
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Hmmm, let's take a closer look at this. With an important bit of very good news to tell, Northrop Grumman's CEO Wes Bush didn't reach out to Bob McDonnell with the big news: instead, he called Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Warner. The meaning of this snub is clear: Northrop Grumman is coming to Virginia in spite of McDonnell and Ken Cuccinelli, both of whom have done so much lately to make Virginians look silly in the national press.

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Here are some more details from the Washington Post piece on this subject:

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Bush gave credit to competitive offers from Maryland and the District but said in Monday's statement that the company's "final decision was driven largely by facility considerations, proximity to our customers, and overall economics."
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Some real estate brokers close to the deal and a Fairfax government source said they expect Northrop to pick a spot at the Fairview Park office complex in Fairfax because it is close to facilities the company already has in Tysons Corner, Rosslyn and other locations.
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According to Abbruzzese, Bush told O'Malley that they "had been impressed with Maryland's package of incentives but were making what amounted to a real estate decision."
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The gulf between Northern Virginia and the rural areas of Virginia that are still re-fighting the Civil War will continue to grow and I look forward to the day when the modernity embracing parts of the state can totally out vote the forces of reaction and bigotry.

USA Lags in Gay Acceptance

The chart above demonstrates how the USA is lagging behind other modern industrial nations in terms of recognizing homosexuality as a normal and acceptable - thereby demonstrating the continued poisonous influence of the GOP and far right Christianists in America. It is noteworthy that Spain, once a bastion of Catholicism, is three times more accepting of homosexuality than the USA. Progressive Germany is only slightly behind Spain, while not surprisingly, Sweden is far more accepting than even Spain.

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.

India Decriminalises Gay Sex

I have never been to India but have a number of clients of Indian descent a few of who are gay. While the ruling of the Delhi High Court will not alone end homophobia in India or among the Indian diaspora, the fact that same sex relations no longer carry a potential prison term cannot help but subconsciously begin to undermine some of the historic and societal bigotry against gays and lesbians. The Court's full 105 page opinion can be found here. Another aspect of the Court's ruling is that it brings India more in line with other modern secular nations and should help the forces of modernity. (NOTE: This step towards modernity happened only in 2003 in Virginia with the Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court decision). Here are some highlights from the Times of India:
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NEW DELHI: India took a giant, albeit belated, step towards globalisation on Thursday when the Delhi high court delivered a historic judgement to amend 149-year-old colonial-era law — Section 377 of the IPC — and decriminalise private consensual sex between adults of the same sex. It is the biggest victory yet for gays rights and a major milestone in the country's social evolution. India becomes the 127th country to take the guilt out of homosexuality.

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In a judgment that has aroused strong reactions from religious and political groups, the court declared that Section 377 IPC, where it ``criminalized consensual sexual acts of adults in private'', violated fundamental rights to personal liberty (Article 21 of the Constitution) and equality (Article 14) and prohibition of discrimination (Article 15).

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In a courtroom tense with anticipation, the bench invoked Jawaharlal Nehru's stirring words to the Constituent Assembly, while linking the issue of homosexuality with the politically resonant theme of inclusiveness. ``If there is one constitutional tenet that can be said to be (the) underlying theme of the Indian Constitution, it is that of inclusiveness.'' As a corollary, it added that ``those perceived by the majority as `deviants' or `different' are not on that score excluded or ostracized.''

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"There is almost unanimous medical and psychiatric opinion that homosexuality is not a disease or a disorder and is just another expression of human sexuality,'' the court observed.

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The verdict triggered protests from religious leaders across the spectrum who invoked the ``will of God'' to claim that the ruling would lead to the ``ruination'' of society and family values. Social workers and psychologists, however, welcomed the order, describing it as ``scientific and humane.''

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I cannot help but note that as in America, it is the forces of ignorance and bigotry that hide behind religion who condemned the Court's ruling. It's interesting that the Court's references to the Indian Constitution could be instructive to the U.S. Supreme Court insofar as it notes that the majority does not have the right to exclude or ostracize disliked minorities.